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GENETIC PHILOSOPHY 
OF EDUCATION 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



AN OUTLINE OF INDIVIDUAL 

STUDY 

12 mo. cloth, $1.25 net. 

A manual of methods for the study 
of the human individual 



THE NERVOUS LIFE 
12 mo. cloth, $1.00 net, 

A study of the causes of nerve dis- 
orders, and rational methods of 
controlling them. 



171 

GENETIC PHILOSOPHY 
OF EDUCATION 



AN EPITOME 

OF THE PUBLISHED EDUCATIONAL WRITINGS 

OF PRESIDENT G. STANLEY HALL 

OF CLARK UNIVERSITY 



BY 
G. E. PARTRIDGE, Ph.D. 

FORMERLY LECTURER IN CLARK UNIVERSITY 



WITH AN INTRODUCTORY NOTE BY PRESIDENT HALL 



IFtew J^orft 

STURGIS & WALTON 

COMPANY 

1912 



V ^ 



Copyright 1912 
By STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY 



Set up and electrotyped. Published May, 1912 



£"C'A31G010 



PREFACE 

In this book I have tried to present, for students 
and all interested in education, the main teachings of 
the genetic school as these are formulated in the 
writings of its most enthusiastic and strongest repre- 
sentative, indeed we may say its creator,. President G. 
Stanley Hall, of Clark University. In a word, my 
book is an epitome of the published writings of Presi- 
dent Hall, and is solely that. I have added nothing 
I have not found in his writings, and I have drawn 
from no other sources. 1 ) Though the influence of his 
work, which I think we may justly claim to be the 
most important contribution of all times to the phi- 
losophy of education, has now been felt in every de- 
partment of the school system, and in all fields of 
activity, in which human welfare is an ideal, both at 
home and abroad, this philosophy as a whole seems 
still inaccessible to a great many who need to have it 
in a simple and comprehensive form. CAt the close 
of 1909 President Hall's collected works included two 
hundred and ninety-five titles of books and articles, 
almost all bearing upon the subject of education. 1 
Aside from the quantity of this material, its style and 
the great variety of publications in which the articles 

1 My review has included all that had been published at the 
close of 1911. 

v 



vi PREFACE 

are to be found interpose obstacles both to the inter- 
ested reader who is not a specialist, and also to such 
a task as mine. I cannot hope to have included in a 
single small volume everything important to educa- 
tional theory contained in these writings. I have tried 
merely to trace the main thread of the argument, and 
to show the applications of the genetic view of the 
problems of education in such a way that anyone 
willing to follow closely a condensed outline, without 
the help of much illustration and elucidation, can 
readily understand. I am quite conscious of failing 
to convey adequately the scope of the contributions 
of Dr. Hall to the great themes of feeling, morals, 
religion, and the motor life, to the educational aspects 
of which I believe he has brought greater light than 
any other man : and especially it would be a matter 
of regret if I have given the impression, either that 
here is a closed system of thought which we may now 
proceed to teach, or that the last word of the thinker 
whom I have tried to represent has been spoken. On 
many of the most important themes we may still ex- 
pect new thoughts from him which cannot fail still 
further to broaden our conceptions of education. I re- 
gret, too, that the style and persuasiveness, and the 
richness of content and illustration that characterises 
all the writings of Dr. Hall have, of necessity, been al- 
most lost in so brief a review. All I can hope is that 
nothing essential of the argument nor of the more 
general applications of the genetic principles has es- 
caped me, and I think there has not. My work is 
an introduction rather than a summary. Many of the 



PREFACE vii 

articles should be read by every student, and no one 
can claim to be informed about education until he 
has read and studied at least the two larger works of 
President Hall: Adolescence and Educational Prob- 
lems. 

It is difficult to explain precisely how the materials 
have been treated, since no uniform method has been 
adhered to. Often I have merely condensed, some- 
times I have quoted, but more often I have told in 
my own words the main point of a discussion. I have 
tried to bring to the topic in hand all that I could 
find, without regard to the order in which it appeared 
in the original. Such a method makes it difficult to 
refer each statement and paragraph to its sources, so 
I have merely indicated by references the main articles 
bearing upon the topic of each section. In Chapter 
VIII, more than elsewhere, I have felt the need of 
explaining in my own words the principles of the 
genetic education. Here I have departed most from 
the originals, and presumably have sacrificed most 
for the sake of brevity. The general arrangement 
is entirely a choice of my own, and is made both 
to facilitate the practical use of the genetic philosophy, 
by student and teacher, and also to try to suggest 
the cogency and order of it by throwing its main 
features into sharp relief in a systematic presentation. 
Several possible arrangements suggested themselves, 
each, including the one I adopted, having limitations. 
The plan chosen is to show the genetic theory at work, 
so to speak, within three groups of problems which 
all together make up the main or central themes of edu- 



viii PREFACE 

cation. The first part contains the philosophical, 
biological, and psychological bases of the educational 
theory: those general principles of the sciences of 
human nature upon which education must rest. The 
second part presents the principles of education, un- 
derstood as the whole process of conscious evolution 
and the effect of environment generally — principles 
applicable, therefore, not only to the school, but to the 
home, and to all other institutions that control the 
child. The third part indicates the application of 
these principles to the departments and problems of 
the school. Part IV contains special chapters upon 
religious institutions, the education of women, and 
racial pedagogy. Such repetition as this arrangement 
involves seems to be advantageous, both in enforcing 
the main principles upon which education rests, and 
also in making a clear statement upon each topic. 

All must admit that there is a lack at the present 
time, at least among the rank and file of teachers, and 
in the public mind generally, of any adequate philoso- 
phy of education, or even of a point of view from 
which the themes of school and home can be dis- 
cussed broadly and intelligently. The older philoso- 
phies of Froebel, Hegel, and Herbart are certainly in- 
sufficient to meet present needs, and especially in the 
training of teachers is this painfully felt. They are 
not only obscure, and little inspiring, either of breadth 
of thought or intelligent practice, but they fail en- 
tirely to connect with the teacher's daily life, unless 
they be taught in a very shallow and formal way. 

The question now arises whether, in the new genetic 



PREFACE ix 

theory of education, we have not already a much more 
suitable philosophy for the school and the home. No 
one would maintain that we have in it a completed 
system of thought, and indeed the fundamental prin- 
ciple of the theory itself denies such a possibility, 
but at least it can be claimed that the evolutionary 
philosophy has now made a first survey of all the 
main problems of education, and that a far better phi- 
losophy for the teacher has been produced than has ever 
before been offered to him. It has the great advantage 
of pertaining to the same world as that in which the 
practical worker lives and thinks ; it touches his experi- 
ence and demands of him a kind of thought in which 
he is already at home. It asks him to consider child- 
hood, his own childhood, in the light of the whole 
past and future of the race — a broad programme, to 
be sure, but one that is not out of the reach of the 
ordinary mind, even though it be quite incapable of 
rigid philosophic thinking. The genetic view is thus 
helpfully democratic. It stands for an interpretation 
of the common facts of everyday life. It gives an 
honourable place, in the search for truth, to feelings 
that all have and can understand, and to common 
sense. It is thus one aspect of the pragmatic wave 
which has lately inundated even the higher places of 
philosophy, and the study of education from the genetic 
point of view becomes one of the best introductions 
to the new humanism, and to all the more special 
branches of philosophy. Its central principle is in- 
deed that very doctrine upon which all pragmatism 
is based — that it is in terms of man's practical inter- 



x PREFACE 

ests that all theoretical problems are finally to be 
judged, and all human institutions appraised. 

If the centre of the training of teachers were in the 
schoolroom, where it should be, ideal conditions would 
be obtained for the teaching of just such a philosophy 
of education as the genetic view contains. The stu- 
dent would soon see that, though common sense and 
instinct are the corner-stones of his art, they are not 
the whole structure. Questions would arise demand- 
ing answers that can be learned only by a broad study 
of childhood and interpretation of it in the light of 
science. From such a quest the student would return 
to his practical task with enlarged views of both the 
theory and the practice of it, only to find that there 
are still deeper problems. It is by such a natural 
dialectic that the thoughtful teacher broadens out until 
he comes at last into contact with, and can absorb 
and utilise, that outer circle of scientific knowledge 
and reason that we may justly call a philosophy of 
education — those principles which represent the deep- 
est interpretation of life of which one is capable. 
That the genetic or evolutionary philosophy is pre- 
cisely the science of life and philosophy which must 
be the farthest vision of the great number of practical 
workers in every department of life, can well be 
claimed. If this philosophy need examination and 
searching criticism in the light of more fundamental 
principles, it is certainly no part of the work of the 
practical educator to undertake it. 

The genetic philosophy of education, moreover, is 
not for the teacher alone ; it is also an ideal philosophy 



PREFACE xi 

of parenthood and the home. School and home are 
here seen united in a common work, guided by com- 
mon principles. The time is fast coming when no 
parent can be fully competent to train his child in the 
home unless he understand the thought that is direct- 
ing the school. The genetic philosophy is becoming 
a common fund of knowledge for teacher and parent 
for it is the doctrine of the development of the whole 
individual under the influence and guidance of all the 
forces, inner and outer, which affect him, no one of 
which can be understood fully without reference to 
the others. 

Though this book is intended especially for the 
student and amateur worker in educational theory, I 
should like to think that, as a result of it, some others 
— philosophers and experts — would feel disposed to 
bestow upon the evolutionary philosophy of education 
more searching criticism than they have hitherto given 
it. Here is at least the richest mine of practical prin- 
ciples which education has ever had the good fortune 
to fall heir to. Were they wrong throughout, they 
would still be justified by their effect in stimulating 
thought, as they do, upon every important topic in the 
whole field. Children, it seems, must be educated in 
any case, whether we have a philosophy or not. We 
have never yet come to the point, in education, where 
our fundamental principles can rest securely upon 
science or philosophy. Perhaps we never shall. But 
certainly science and philosophy are needed, and any 
philosophy that holds out hope even of practical as- 



xii PREFACE 

sistance for a time deserves a hearing, whether it be 
fundamental and logically coherent or not. But need 
we always remain without a foundation for educa- 
tion which shall satisfy, not only practical needs of 
the day, but all the demands of reason as well? Phi- 
losophers have held themselves aloof too much from 
the problems of the social life, business, and educa- 
tion, being willing to leave them to empiricists and 
practical people who do not demand consistency in 
their thought, and who are not afraid to proceed 
with faith rather than reason as their guide. But, 
at the present time, especially with the encouragement 
of the pragmatic and humanistic fashions in thought, 
should not philosophers, as well as scientists in special 
fields, attempt to bring the new education into line 
with their first principles, or perhaps broaden and re- 
adjust their principles to accommodate the new edu- 
cation? We have had much discussion of the limits 
and meaning of evolution from the standpoint of crit- 
ical philosophy. Is not a wider field opened up by the 
genetic theory of education and the applications to 
practise which it seems to warrant? Are such prin- 
ciples as recapitulation, and the maxims that are 
drawn from it, ultimate? Do they stand alone, or 
do they come within the sphere of a more radical 
philosophy? Do we look rightly to philosophy to 
clarify such questions as specialisation, social serv- 
ice as opposed to the perfection of the individual, 
social force as antagonistic to nature, the conflict of 
reason and feeling, the place of aesthetic feelings in 
education? All these questions, so earnestly raised 



PREFACE xiii 

by the genetic theory, and perhaps solved, yet de- 
mand criticism from every point of view. Here, 
if anywhere, academic philosophy may show its use- 
fulness for practical life, for to answer the questions 
we raise is merely to become clear upon the funda- 
mental principles of conduct, knowledge, the aesthetic, 
society, and nature. We can maintain that no philoso- 
phy in the past has thrown much light upon education. 
Is this limitation inherent in philosophy, or is it due to 
the fact that education has never yet presented to 
philosophy either sufficiently earnest problems or a 
broad enough gathering of data, to stimulate its inter- 
est and afford scope for its method ? A more intimate 
relation, at the present time, between philosophy and 
education, however meagre the immediate results 
might be, could not fail, it would seem, to benefit both. 

During the year or more this book has been in prepa- 
ration I have incurred obligations that demand at the 
least a word of record. To my wife I owe so much 
that to mention merely many hours of assistance with 
troublesome questions of diction seems a singularly 
inadequate acknowledgment of her devotion to all my 
tasks. To President Hall I am deeply grateful for 
his hearty assurance of good-will when the work was 
first proposed and for prompt aid, on his busy days, 
when I needed help. To Dr. Louis N. Wilson, chief 
of that unequalled place of books, the Clark University 
Library, and to his staff, a word of thanks can hardly 
indicate, I am sure, my sense of debt for unwearied 
searching of files that my work might be easier. To 



xiv PREFACE 

Mr. Robert K. Shaw of the Worcester Free Public Li- 
brary, whose friendly interest and liberality made a per- 
plexing part easy, I have again, as many times before, 
become a debtor. To other friends, especially to Mr. 
and Mrs. George Franklin Cole of Worcester, and 
Mrs. Walter Drew Loring of Boston, I owe much 
that cannot easily be expressed — most of all for 
the good-cheer that lands and seas did not bar. And 
last, to my little daughter, Miriam, whose willing feet 
have sped so many miles for me during months of 
my illness, my most loving gratitude is due. 

G. E. Partridge. 
Worcester, 

January 16, 19 12. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

Dr. George E. Partridge, the author of this work, 
was for some years my student and for many more 
has been my neighbour and friend. The proposition 
to epitomise my own views was his, but had I been 
moved to select someone for this purpose, I can think 
of no one I should have preferred to him. As I have 
read over these pages, I have had several pleasant sur- 
prises. One was to realise that the various partial 
views I have expressed at various times and places 
were capable of being mosaiced together into so re- 
spectable a whole as the author makes out of them 
in the first part of this book. Again, I have been sur- 
prised to see how well acquainted Dr. Partridge has 
made himself with even my smaller and more obscure 
articles and brought them into their place, and again, 
I have been pleased to recognise the wisdom of his 
judgment in sometimes retaining my own phraseology 
and often improving on it by briefer and simpler 
forms of expression. There seems under the circum- 
stances that there is little else left for me to say in 
an introduction, except the above testimony to the 
general ability and fidelity of the representation and 
to this I very gladly bear witness. 

G. Stanley Hall. 
Clark University, 
Worcester, Mass. 
Jan. 12, 1912. 

xv 



CONTENTS 

INTRODUCTION BY G. STANLEY HALL 

PART I 

PHILOSOPHICAL, BIOLOGICAL, AND PSYCHOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS 

OF EDUCATION 
CHAPTER PAGE 

I What is Education? 3 

II The Philosophical Basis of Education . . 7 

III Biological Psychology 14 

IV The Fundamental Principles of Genetic Psy- 

chology 20 

V Instincts and Feelings 32 

VI The Intellect 59 

VII Developmental Stages 72. 

PART II 
general principles of education 

VIII General Principles of Education . ... 91 

IX Physical and Industrial Education . . . 122 

X Education of the Emotions 152 

XI Moral Education 167 

XII Religious Education 181 

XIII The Training of the Intellect 192 

XIV Educational Periods 205 



CONTENTS 
PART III 

THE SCHOOL SYSTEM 
CHAPTER PAGE 

XV The School System 219 

XVI The Vernacular 229 

XVII Foreign Languages 246 

XVIII Natural Sciences . . . 251 

XIX Elementary Mathematics 260 

XX History 266 

XXI Music and Dancing 272 

XXII Drawing and Art 287 

XXIII Philosophy in the College 295 

XXIV The Kindergarten 303 

XXV The School Grades 310 

XXVI The High School 314 

XXVII The College 323 

XXVIII The University 332 

XXIX The Training of Teachers 337 



PART IV 

special problems 

XXX Religious Institutions 349 

XXXI The Education of Girls 359 

XXXII Racial Pedagogy 376 

Bibliography 383 



PART I 

PHILOSOPHICAL, BIOLOGICAL, AND PSY- 
CHOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF 
EDUCATION 



CHAPTER I 

WHAT IS EDUCATION? 

Education may be defined, in one sense, as the 
whole effect of environment. The individual is in 
some way affected by everything with which he comes 
into contact, from the first moment of life until the 
end. Teaching and all other conscious efforts to shape 
the course of development are parts of a larger whole, 
the nature and laws of which must be taken into ac- 
count in any adequate study of education. The pur- 
pose of teaching, thus considered, becomes plain. It 
is a factor in evolution : like natural selection, sexual 
selection, adaptation, it is a means of carrying on the 
development of the individual, and the evolution of 
the race, to a higher level. Man is as yet incomplete ; 
it is likely that all his best experiences still lie before 
him. He may indeed be only at the beginning of a 
career, the end of which we cannot foresee. If this 
be true, the function of the present generation is to 
prepare for the next step. It must so live that it may 
become the best possible transmitter of heredity, and 
to the greatest degree of which it is capable, it must 
add to the equipment of the new generation. The 
efficiency with which these functions are performed 
is the test of the value of society, of education, and 

3 



4 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

of all public institutions and private morality. All 
are best judged according to the service they perform 
in advancing the interests of mankind. 

Immediately the old ethical problem of the conflict 
between self-interest and service comes to light. Is 
life devoted to the welfare of humanity entirely a 
life of self-sacrifice? What place is there in such an 
ideal for the private interests of the individual? We 
shall find that, on the evolutionary view, the welfare 
of the individual corresponds, in great measure, to 
that of the race, but that beyond this common good 
there is a sphere of self-interest, to live in which is to 
rob the future of its rights. It is the problem of 
education to develop the individual to precisely that 
stage of completeness at which he can most successfully 
live in the service of humanity, and at the same time 
enjoy a normal healthy life; and so to inspire the 
young with love for humanity, and so to educate their 
instincts and ideals that, when the rights of the in- 
dividual and of the race come into conflict, the right 
of the race shall always be given precedence. Edu- 
cation of the young, thus understood, is plainly not 
only the most moral and vital work we do, but the 
most inclusive; for in a sense it involves all other 
practical activities. Nothing else requires so profound 
knowledge, nor so earnest thought, as the training of 
the child. 

If this be a just valuation of the function of teach- 
ing, it is obvious. that a science of education cannot 
be derived from any single principle, nor philosophy, 
nor science, however broad these may be. All 



WHAT IS EDUCATION? 5 

sciences, as well as all practical activities, must con- 
tribute, directly or indirectly, to the education of the 
young; and if they do not, they fail, by the criterion 
of value just declared, to have deep worth for life in 
any way. To understand fully what education means, 
to take an intelligent part in it, demands, therefore, a 
knowledge of many fields of human thought and ac- 
tion, and the most serious purposes we can bring to any 
work. 

Too often theorists have tried to derive the prin- 
ciples of education from systems of philosophy, ap- 
plying one or a few barren formulas to all problems. 
Naturally the teaching that has followed such phi- 
losophy has been narrow, schematic, and formal. 
Educational theory is too comprehensive, it lies too 
near to all the concrete, practical interests of life to 
be thus abstractly treated. And yet, for that very 
reason — because of the breadth and depth of the in- 
terests involved in education — some ultimate philos- 
ophy must play a part in it. In every deep purpose 
in life we act, consciously or unconsciously, upon be- 
liefs beyond which we cannot go: upon affirmations 
which constitute for us our philosophy. In the same 
way education must assume or discover principles 
which shall represent the deepest and fullest meaning 
of the world, and this must be the foundation of all its 
thought and effort. The philosophy of the past, we 
say, has been too abstract, too formal, too far re- 
moved from practical life to meet the needs of so 
vast and changing a demand as the education of the 
child. Its chief service has been to the sciences that 



6 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

analyse experience, that try to sum up the past of 
the world, rather than to those that aim to forecast 
and direct the future. It has not stood well the test 
of ability to inspire youth with zeal, nor of stimulating 
effective and wholesome methods of training them 
— functions which a true philosophy, if it aspire to 
become a philosophy of education, must certainly per- 
form. Therefore we look to new and untried philoso- 
phies for our first principles of education. 

References. — See page 13, 



CHAPTER II 

THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS OF EDUCATION 

A true philosophy, whatever else its purpose or 
merits, must bear the tests, both of inspiring youth with 
right attitudes toward life, and of inculcating correct 
views of education throughout society. It must be 
a body of principles capable of furnishing deep and 
wholesome motives and beliefs to teacher and parent, 
and it must be a creed suited to the needs of effective, 
practical living. In a word, a philosophy, to be true, 
must do more than merely hold together logically. 
It must have practical bearings. It must not merely 
dictate to conduct; it must also serve. In a very 
deep sense, it is quite as reasonable to say that philoso- 
phy is based upon education, as that education is based 
upon philosophy. Philosophy grows out of life, as 
its broadest and deepest meaning, formulated by the 
same powers of heart and mind that we apply to our 
other tasks. Only as such a sum of wisdom has it a 
right to dictate either to reason or to conduct. 

The tests through which a philosophy must pass be- 
fore it can be judged true are, therefore, many and 
severe. It must first of all be optimistic, pointing 
always toward the future rather than the past. It 
must grow out of, and be in harmony with, instincts 

7 



8 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

and feelings. It must agree with common sense, with 
sight and touch, and with all the realities of life. It 
must find a place for the facts of the physical sciences, 
and also for the truths of the world of ideals and im- 
agination. Above all, it must inspire the young to 
activity, and to a love of knowledge. 

These tests require that philosophy shall present the 
world to the mind as real — as doubly real. It is 
so for life ; it must remain so in philosophy. We live 
in a world of physical facts, laws, and things. It 
is also a world of spiritual things, of things imagined 
rather than known, believed rather than proved. A 
true philosophy must stimulate the mind to live in 
both these worlds; to enjoy them, to believe in their 
reality. If philosophy merely substitutes for concrete 
experiences the intellectual effort completely to har- 
monise the world to the reason, it is wrong, for then 
it fails to make all of reality seem real. Thinking 
is not the only, nor the surest;, road to truth. The in- 
tellect is at best a superficial part of the mind. Ex- 
cessive analysis, introspection, and criticism is mor- 
bid. It can give us but a narrow view of reality, and 
can not alone reach the eternal verities. Reasoned 
philosophies and theologies pass away, "but the deeper 
philosophy of poetry, folklore, belief — all that which 
comes from the heart — endures. All the great veri- 
ties, religious and ethical, are formulations of the feel- 
ings — things believed rather than known or proved; 
truths that cannot be reached by argument nor demon- 
stration. 

Any philosophy that fails to make youth enthusiastic 



' THE BASIS OF EDUCATION 9 

in the right way; that fails to create interest in re- 
alities; that makes youth pessimistic or blase; that 
arouses intellect more than feeling; that breeds fa- 
miliarity with the universe, destroying wholesome awe 
and wonder, is wrong. It is wrong because it will 
not pass the profoundest test we have — fitness to lead 
men to the fullest enjoyment of a normal life of ac- 
tivity and interest in the future. The intellect has no 
higher claims to judge truth than these immediate 
feelings — nor so high — for it represents the indi- 
vidual alone, while the feelings are racial, and reveal 
to us truths larger than the self. All thought must 
eventually be brought to this test. Everything that 
claims to be thought good, beautiful, or true, must 
pass the censorship of our practical judgments. Any- 
thing that offends our deepest instincts as teachers 
and parents, or that is seen to be unfit to teach to 
youth, cannot be called true in the deepest sense. 

No philosophy can be said to be proved valid until 
it is seen what it can do, directly or indirectly, for the 
coming generation. It is in this sense that it has 
been said that philosophy is dependent upon educa- 
tion. All truth has work to do, and its function is 
to guide and direct experience. Truth is therefore, 
in its last analysis, a tool of evolution — a part of the 
whole device we call education. Thought and action 
are mutually dependent. No system of truth can be 
reasoned out, from which alone practical rules of con- 
duct can be derived. And no practical activity can be 
wholly right unless it has broadened out its grasp to 
include the deepest meaning of life, 



io GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

Judged by such standards as these much of the phi- 
losophy of the present day, taught in the colleges, is 
found wanting. Much of it is merely critical, and 
ends in negation rather than in belief or affirmation. 
It is too rational ; too analytic. It leads away from ac- 
tion, and not toward it. It is too likely to destroy the 
love of positive science, and to substitute for the 
natural tests of truth, artificial and shallow first prin- 
ciples and formulas. From it little can be derived 
that is helpful in education, and in no sense can we 
say that the rules of the art of teaching can be de- 
duced from such truth. 

Applying all these tests of truth to the facts of ex- 
perience, and now understanding precisely in what 
sense a philosophy can be said to be a foundation for 
educational theory, what are the most general, most 
real, or most true realities and principles — the eternal 
verities beyond which the mind cannot go, but which 
it must accept as a basis, or point of departure, for 
all thought and action? It is not to be expected that 
these will be demonstrated, that they will be brought 
into a system completely harmonious from a logical 
standpoint, but rather they must satisfy moral needs, 
common sense, and instinct, and must square with the 
facts of science. 

The most immediately and certainly known thing in 
the universe is space. It is the first element. It is 
infinite, a perfect continuum, that in which everything 
else exists — whether God, matter, or soul. Nothing 
can be more real nor more unanalysable. It needs 
no proof, and the belief in it cannot be uprooted by 



THE BASIS OF EDUCATION n 

any demonstration. The mind should rest on this be- 
lief, and all efforts to derive space, and to spin it out 
of consciousness, as is so often tried in philosophy, are 
perverted and wasted. 

Wherever we look, we find that space is occupied. 
The world is full to the brim of something, which, by 
the help of modern physics, we know to be ether. 
Ether is everywhere, the basis of all that is real. The 
contemplation of it gives a sense of warmth and near- 
ness, though our senses can grasp but an infinitesimal 
part of its reality. This substance existing in infinite 
space, and filling it with reality, is the basic material 
of the universe. 

The world substance, however, does not merely exist 
in space. It has power or energy. Substance pre- 
sents itself to us in motion, accomplishing work so 
vast in extent that we cannot comprehend it. But 
when we interpret it as will, and think of it as effort 
behind the doings of nature, our feeling of kinship 
with the universal power grows, though what this 
force is, which is everywhere at work, we cannot 
know. 

Great as this power is, and so unfathomable in its 
nature, it is not a capricious and whimsical monster, 
but is subject to eternal laws. Every advance in the 
physical sciences confirms us in our belief that the 
universe is lawful through and through. And our 
daily experiences, as we carry on our activities in the 
complex but still orderly texture of society, add to 
our conviction that even the remotest part of the 
universe and the least comprehensible act are lawful 



12 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

and orderly. Discovery of the lawfulness of the uni- 
verse enables us to live in a feeling of security, with 
the belief that our previsions will not be futile, and 
that we are guided and supported in a universe that 
is controlled throughout by law, reason, and cause, 
and is working with the regularity of a machine. 

But the universe is not merely a machine, governed 
by law and order. We see that it everywhere abounds 
in life — so exuberant and overflowing that the whole 
world seems animated. Every creature is driven by 
a will to live and to enjoy an ever higher and fuller 
life, and this seems to be the expression of a great 
fundamental purpose in the world. 

Last, is the principle of evolution. The course of 
change is upward. The best survive, and the weak 
and ineffective go to the wall. There is everywhere 
advance and improvement, and the field of pleasure 
is ever widening. The principle of growth is benign, 
and the evidence is borne in on us from every hand 
that good-will and beneficence are at the root of all 
things — that a power exists that is friendly to man 
and takes an interest in his welfare ; that it is good to 
be alive. 

Such a philosophy rests upon the evidence of the 
senses, upon common sense, and upon the facts of 
science. It bears the test of ability to inspire youth 
with the right attitudes toward life. It is a philosophy 
of optimism and progress, suited to be a guide in a 
sane and strenuous life. It can well serve, therefore, 
as a background of thought, belief, or affirmation upon 
which a science of education may rest ? not in the; 



THE BASIS OF EDUCATION 13 

sense that it may be derived from these principles, 
but that it shall include in its teachings such an atti- 
tude toward reality as a whole. 

References. — 8, 60, 116, 196, 284. See page 383. 



CHAPTER III 

BIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY 

Having found that certain principles of science and 
philosophy satisfy deep needs of thought and life, the 
business of a philosophy of education is not so much 
to subject them to searching doubt and criticism, and 
to follow out their implications with logical precision, 
as to carry them forward to a study of the growing 
child, in the most comprehensive manner possible. 
The exact limits of each science will not greatly in- 
terest it, but the aim will be to seek truth wherever 
it may be found. Its centre, it seems reasonable to 
assume, will be psychology, for it is most directly upon 
the mind of the child that we bring our efforts to 
bear. 

The ideal of the new psychology, based upon the 
dictum, No psychosis without neurosis, has been to 
discover for each mental state and process an equiva- 
lent or correlate in the body or in nature. This is 
the main problem of physiological psychology, of psy- 
cho-physics, and of the experimental methods gen- 
erally. The point of view is good, so far as it goes, 
but it is still a narrow conception of the province 
of a science of mind. A far more fruitful method is 
opened to it by the principle introduced into biology 

14 






BIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY, 15 



by Charles Darwin. Not only does it reveal a pro- 
gramme of more important and more far-reaching 
work than the study in the laboratory, but it sug- 
gests the means of a truer interpretation of all the 
facts. Such a science is entitled to the name of 
Biological Philosophy ; for it extends its problems 
from the study of the merely individual mental proc- 
esses of the adult, to the study of all mind, past, pres- 
ent, and future, in whatever form it appears ; and its 
interpretation passes from the physiological explana- 
tion of mental states to the biological. 

The fundamental fact and principle of this biologi- 
cal philosophy is that mind and body have evolved 
together in the race, and have developed together in the 
individual, in one continuous process. Not only, 
therefore, must all mental facts be understood in 
terms of, or with reference to, physical facts, but the 
individual, both in his mental and physical aspects, 
must be studied in relation to the whole history of 
the race. This evolutionary principle must be ap- 
plied to all problems of psychology, until we have a 
complete natural history of the mind. Psychology 
must deal with facts, and not, as in the past, with ul- 
timate principles. Its field is the study of all ex- 
pressions of mind, all actions and institutions that 
are its products, including the instincts of animals, 
myths, customs and beliefs of primitive man, reflex 
and automatic movements, disease and abnormalities. 

This new method and problem in psychology, taken 
in its widest sense, may be called the genetic. It aims 
to explain whatever process or state it observes by 



16 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

tracing it, in all its connections, to its origin. To 
understand any trait of the human mind, for ex- 
ample, it is necessary to discover not only the relation 
of the mental process to the changes in the nervous 
system upon which it depends, and to analyse the 
process into its elements, but we must know the genesis 
of the trait in the individual, both in its physical and 
its mental manifestations and connections, and also the 
whole history of it as it appears in the race. This 
is an ideal not to be attained in any problem at the 
present time, but it must constantly be striven toward 
in every investigation of the facts of human life. 
The genetic method has, therefore, two main branches : 
the study of mind in its development in the child, and 
the study of mind in its evolution in the race. No 
problem can be regarded as deeply understood that 
does not take into account both these aspects. 

This is precisely the kind of psychology that is 
of most interest to a science of education, which of 
necessity is concerned with the facts about childhood 
and their interpretation or meaning. It is astonish- 
ing that not until our own day has psychology under- 
taken to study childhood, since in the child all the 
fundamental traits of human life may be observed, 
in a simple and natural form. Here we may study 
in the spirit in which the naturalist investigates, ap- 
plying similar methods to securing facts, and de- 
riving principles from them inductively. New as this 
genetic method is, it is so fruitful that it has already ac- 
complished much both for science and the practical life. 
It has helped to solve problems of philosophy and 



BIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY 17 

psychology; has contributed to the science of religion 
some of the most important principles; and has sug- 
gested the outlines of a whole theory of life, truly in 
accord with the doctrines of modern science. 

There are many ways of applying the methods of 
genetic study, in detail, to the problems of life, and 
even within the limited field of child-study there are 
several distinct types of investigation. Childhood 
may be studied stage by stage; one child may be 
studied in detail; or a special topic may be studied, 
collecting facts from many individuals. Some of the 
work is experimental; some is purely observational. 
One method, that of the syllabus, or questionnaire, 
particularly represents the spirit of the genetic 
method. By this means data can be collected from 
a great number of individuals, of different ages, en- 
abling the investigator to form a picture, as it were, 
of the whole course of development of a trait, in all 
its varieties. This is strikingly in contrast with the 
older introspective or analytic methods, which tried 
to analyse a mental state or process as it appeared 
in the mind of one individual. This method of the 
syllabus has already been applied to a great 
number of topics, including problems of the feelings, 
language, social activity, religious life, and many 
others. 

Regarded as the study of mind in all its manifesta- 
tions and expressions, psychology must be looked 
upon as at the very beginning, and not the end, of 
its career. Not only have many of its problems not 
been solved, but a great number have not even been 



18 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

discovered. The work lies before it of recording and 
explaining all mental facts, both in the individual and 
in the race, and of recording the history of every 
mental trait. Such an outlook precludes entirely the 
possibility of final conclusions about most problems, 
for only a very small part of the necessary data are 
as yet gathered, and each year may witness the up- 
setting of our most cherished convictions, Psychology 
must be consistently inductive like the other nat- 
ural sciences. It must collect facts and base its con- 
clusions upon them. Especially all such problems as 
the nature of mind and matter must be left wide 
open. Both the physical and mental manifestations 
of reality must be studied in their relations to one 
another. We must assume, as a working hypothesis, 
that no mental state or process is without its con- 
comitant physical state or process; but that the two 
are identical, or if not, how one acts upon the other, 
we cannot know. Faith in science directs us to be- 
lieve that sometime these two series will be shown 
to be aspects of a higher substance or principle, in 
which both law and freedom, mind and matter, im- 
manence and transcendence will lose their partial as- 
pects and will appear as a whole. But for the present 
we must be content to work without conclusions. We 
must lay these questions aside, or adopt any hypoth- 
esis that leaves the mind free for enquiry. The 
psychologist must ever push out into new regions of 
fact, and not merely try to establish principles from 
the comparatively few facts we already have. Only 
in such a way can the sciences of human life become 



BIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY 19 

broad enough to support the practical activities which 
must rest upon them — the greatest of which is edu- 
cation. 

See references at end of Chapter IV. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF GENETIC PSY- 
CHOLOGY 

Genetic psychology assumes as an ultimate fact, 
and as a background for all its principles, an endless 
process of time, stretching out into an infinitely re- 
mote past and pointing toward an infinitely remote 
future. Every thing, and every event, must be re- 
garded as the completion of an infinitely long process 
of development, in terms of which it can be explained ; 
and also as germinal of a future, of which it is in 
turn to be the cause or genetic origin. Development 
and change are continuous and unbroken. Nothing 
is stationary, and man himself is in a stage of active 
evolution toward a higher form. Although his body 
seems, in many ways, to have reached its highest point 
of development, his mind continues to advance with 
ever greater acceleration. Changes in the industrial, 
the social, the moral, and the religious life were never 
so great as now. Precisely what the final result of 
this evolution of man is to produce in the universe, 
or even in what direction it is tending, it is quite im- 
possible for us to know, but there is every indication 
that man has not reached his final form, nor the 
perfection of which he is capable : that the best things 

20 



GENETIC PSYCHOLOGY 21 

in his history have not yet happened. Nor can we 
know with any greater certainty what the future has 
in store for other races than our own, nor for animal 
forms, some of which may eventually go far beyond 
the present stage of the highest races of mankind, and 
take the place of the dominant forms of life, when 
these higher types shall have become decadent. 

Such is the conception of man that results from the 
work of Darwin. His mind is to be regarded as quite 
as much an offspring of animal life as is his body. The 
same principles may be applied to both, and both 
must be investigated by similar inductive methods. 
We can understand the mmd only in its development ; 
we shall know it completely only when we can de- 
scribe all its stages from the amoeba up. The emotions 
are best studied in their outward expression; will in 
behaviour; intelligence in sagacity, and not by the 
methods of the laboratory. 

What kind of a mind it is which thus presents itself 
for study, we can now see in a provisional way. It 
must not be regarded as a fixed, definite, and static 
thing, which we can fully understand by looking into 
its processes by introspection; for only the smallest 
part of its powers and meanings can thus be brought 
to light. The mind stretches far beyond the limited 
experiences of the individual. It contains within 
itself all the past and all the future. It has grown 
up in the race, step by step, and has passed through 
stages as different from its present form as we can 
possibly conceive. It is so vastly complex that it is 
never twice alike in the same individual, nor are ever 



22 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

two minds the same. It is a product of millions of 
years of struggle. Its long experiences with light and 
darkness, and with heat and cold, have established 
many of its rhythms. A long apprenticeship in 
aquatic and arboreal life has left deep and indelible 
marks. Sky, wind, storm, flowers, animals, ancient 
industries and occupations, have directed its fears and 
affections, and have made the emotions what they 
now are. It has been shocked and moulded into its 
present form by labour and suffering, and it shows in 
every function the marks of the process through 
which it has passed. Although it is by far the most 
wonderful work of nature it is still very imperfect, full 
of scars and wounds, incompletely co-ordinated, and 
but poorly controlled ; in many ways ill-adapted to the 
practical situations of life. In it barbaric and animal 
impulses are still felt. Its old forms appear at every 
turn; and every trait of mind, as well as of body, is 
full of indications of its origin. So close, indeed, 
is the past to the present in all we think and feel, that 
without referring to what has gone before in the race, 
the human mind, as we know it, is utterly unintelligi- 
ble and mysterious; while many, if not most, of its 
mysteries become clear, when the mind is studied with 
reference to its past. 

This point of view is essential for any introduction 
into the science of psychology. Only thus may one 
grasp the significance of mind in the world, and be 
prepared to interpret the common facts of everyday 
life. One must see that only by studying mind ob- 
jectively, in its racial manifestations, and in many 



GENETIC PSYCHOLOGY 23 

individuals, can any conception of its range, depth, 
and meaning be attained. An individual mind is but 
an infinitesimal fragment and expression of all the 
soul life in the world. The individual is imperfect, 
and limited in every way, hemmed in on every side, 
while the whole mind or soul is marvellously complex, 
efficient, and orderly. Mind must be thought of as 
much larger and richer than its expression in con- 
sciousness, either in the individual, or in the race. In 
fact its highest powers are those which spring from 
the depths of the unconscious, and go back to the ear- 
liest beginnings of the race. Consciousness does not 
reveal these powers. They lie below its threshold. 
They are expressed neither in conscious will nor in in- 
tellect. In these deepest regions of the mind both the 
past and the future are hidden. The impulses which 
move consciousness from behind the scenes, so to say, 
are indeed more truly parts of the soul life than 
are the conscious thoughts, because they direct the 
most important interests of life. Mind, therefore, 
may be thought of as akin to, or consisting of, all 
that force in living things that moves on to ever more 
complete form: a force which we can never find by 
introspection, for though in its essence purposeful, 
it is not contained in any consciousness. This force 
is the will to live, the moving force in all nature. In 
its activities all life is involved. Its movement is 
uninterrupted and continuous. Man, animals, plants, 
and perhaps all inanimate things participate in its 
progress. Thus life in all its forms, and mind itself, 
are indistinguishable in their essence, and though no 



24 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

present theory can completely explain the manner 
in which development has taken place, nor how mind 
and life originated in the world, we can assume 
with all confidence that all growth is alike in nature. 
We must think of it as different in its manifestations 
here and there, but as always essentially the same. 
Whatever the mind or soul which we recognise in in- 
trospection may be, we must regard it as connected 
with all other soul life in the world. We must see that 
it is not only susceptible to all present influences, and 
responsive to every force in nature, but that it re-echoes 
with the reverberations from an immeasurable past, 
and is related in the most intimate ways to all mind, 
past, present, and future. The soul of the individual 
is no more a thing in itself, a unity, than is his body. 
It reflects the growth, not only of the brain, but of the 
whole body, and is connected in the most intricate 
ways, with all its states and changes. It has many 
powers, some more conscious, some less; some pro- 
gressing, some decaying. It, like the body, has sex; 
it is changeable and relative, a moving equilibrium of 
many parts, quite like the physical body in these re- 
spects. In it, from generation to generation, parts 
now become central, and are now submerged; what 
was conscious becomes instinctive or reflex. Many 
parts, once rudimentary, have now become dominant, 
and will in time, in their turn, become rudimentary or 
disappear, or be relegated to the region of the un- 
conscious. From this we can see that mind is a 
changing and passing thing, and that soul life is con- 
tinually lost to the world. Unnumbered types of mind 



GENETIC PSYCHOLOGY 25 

have passed away in producing those which remain, 
and we can form but the dimmest conception of how 
the world must have appeared to most of the creatures 
which have inhabited it. Many of these lost species 
are in our own pedigree. We inherit the stored re- 
sults of their experience, and can perceive faintly 
what their lives must have been. In our own con- 
sciousness there are abundant traces of the far-away 
past. Our slightest experiences may often be ex- 
plained as the remnant of some great psychosis that 
has been lost; our fleeting fancies often afford us 
glimpses of life remote from our own. In all our higher 
thoughts and feelings the simpler and earlier is some- 
how represented. Much lies dormant in us, that is 
brought out only in unusual circumstances. We hold 
the inheritance of many ancestors, of many types of 
life which perhaps have taken out of the world the 
potency and promise of higher mental development 
than our own; and whose choicest possessions we 
have relegated to the unconscious and unused regions 
of mind. 

The evidence for the truth of such a conception of 
the mind and body of man is now so great, and so 
corroborative one part to another, that it is hardly 
possible to doubt it. Both mind and body are full 
of observable traces of their ancient origin, and al- 
though the offered explanation at any one point may 
seem doubtfully true, all together forms a chain of 
evidence that cannot be refuted. Physical evolution 
is now so well established that it needs no further 
proof. The body of man teems with proofs of his 



26 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

connection with all other animal life. Especially in 
the embryonic stage is the evidence clear. The gill- 
slits, which are then produced, are in themselves al- 
most complete proof of the hypothesis of evolution. 
Yet one need not depend upon a single witness. Other 
organs, and both external and internal structure of the 
body, offer quite as strong testimony. Indeed there 
can be no reasonable explanation of the human body 
that does not assume as a first principle the relation 
of it, by evolution of the whole, to every other type of 
animal life; which does not assert that it contains 
relics of a past state, in which it differed greatly from 
its present form, and was similar, at many stages, to 
forms of animal life which still exist. Precisely the 
course man has taken in reaching his present station 
we may never know, but the fact that it was a long 
struggle upward from the most primitive forms, we 
may place at the head of our genetic science. 

The evidence that the mind as well as the body re- 
tains vestiges of the past is also now beyond dispute, 
though the evidence for mental evolution, from the 
very nature of mental states, is often less incisive 
than for the physical. Rudimentary psychoses are 
as evident as rudimentary organs. The study of nerv- 
ous diseases, such as epilepsy, brings to light the close 
connection between abnormality of mind and body, 
and the past. Human courtship, care of the young, 
crime, many phenomena of the hypnotic and hypnoid 
states, fears, subconscious habits, demand for their ex- 
planation an evolutionary theory. Many actions of the 
infant can be explained in no other way. Indeed the 



GENETIC PSYCHOLOGY 2J 

evidence is so strong at every point that we must 
accept the conclusion that the mind has evolved like 
the body, and that it still bears evidences of it in 
its present functions. Many traits of the human 
mind cannot be explained in any other way than as 
useful in the past, under conditions of life, and in 
bodily structures, that do not now exist. And indeed if 
we may be certain that man has evolved at all, and if 
his body may be seen to contain traces of the past, 
we should fully expect the mind to share in the posses- 
sion of these vestiges. There is no escape from this 
view, and we must accept the full consequences of it. 
We must see that mind and body alike are teeming 
with the traces of ancient life, both human and pre- 
human, knowledge of which is of the greatest impor- 
tance for a comprehension of the most common facts 
of daily life; and for education, and all other fields 
of conscious evolution. 

Thus far we have considered the mind and body 
with respect to their nature and contents. It is quite 
as important to understand them in what may be 
called their dynamic aspects, with reference to their 
development, both in the individual and the race, and 
to the relation of the two series, the ontogenetic and 
the phylogenetic, to one another. The discovery of 
the laws of development is one of the chief aims 
of genetic science, and in our practical science of 
man, we are most of all concerned with such prin- 
ciples. The most general formulation of all the facts 
of development that we yet possess is contained in the 
law of recapitulation. This law declares that the in- 



28 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

dividual, in his development, passes through stages 
similar to those through which the race has passed, 
and in the same order; that the human individual of 
the higher races, for example, in the brief period from 
the earliest moment of life to maturity, passes through 
or represents all the stages of life, through which the 
race has passed from that of the single-celled animal to 
that of present adult civilised man. The recapitulatory 
process is sometimes obscured; stages overlap, or be- 
come dissociated; the individual must sometimes 
recount thousands of years of his racial history in 
a day or year ; environment complicates and modifies 
the process in ways still quite unknown; but in a 
general way the individual may be said to recapitulate 
the race. Functions and organs, both physical and 
mental — interests, habits, physical traits and forms 
— develop, flourish for a time, and then disappear, 
or are taken up into higher stages and are transformed, 
the lower seeming to serve as a stimulus for the next 
higher stage. The recapitulatory stages are best 
marked in the earliest periods of the embryonic life, 
when stages as wholes may be said to correspond with 
some fidelity to racial steps. In the later periods, 
they are more likely to appear as fragments, or as 
indications, in this or that function, of racial periods. 
In the embryonic stage, organs unquestionably con- 
nected with primitive life in the sea develop for a 
time, and are then transformed. The gill-slits may be 
mentioned as an example. Without this stage many 
of the higher organs would not appear, for out of 
the gill-slits important organs grow. From them 



GENETIC PSYCHOLOGY 29 

arises the thymus gland ; the mouth is probably formed 
by a union of one pair of them, the olfactory organs 
from another pair ; the middle and outer parts of the 
ear from other parts. In early infancy there are 
traces of a stage of arboreal life, overlaid by later 
traits. The grasping movements of the infant, habits 
of climbing, and many physical traits, indicate that the 
infant is then passing through a stage of life, not un- 
like that still lived by our nearest relatives among the 
simians, and which exists in the child because our 
ancestors passed through such a stage. Later, the 
interests and habits of the child are distinctly akin to 
to those of primitive and savage man. Both in the 
life of feeling and of the intellect the child and the 
savage have much in common. Play shows the marks 
of racial steps ; for the child, quite of his own initiative, 
reproduces, in his free activities, many of the habits 
and traits of earlier stages of life than that into which 
he is born. The theory that play is practice for fu- 
ture occupation is, therefore, but a partial view. Play 
exploits the stages through which man has passed, 
and, in the play life of the child, instincts ripen and 
decay, and are superseded by others, in an order quite 
unintelligible, unless the law of recapitulation be in- 
voked to explain it. 

Even in the later periods of childhood the racial 
steps are by no means entirely broken up nor oblit- 
erated. The period from eight to twelve clearly sug- 
gests a well-defined concomitant stage in racial devel- 
opment. This period in the life of the child is, as it 
were, a culmination of one stage of development. The 



3 o GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

child is then relatively well established in a habit of 
life which serves his needs admirably, and in which 
he appears well adjusted to his environment in every 
way. He suggests now a period in which the race 
was for a long time stable, living in a warm climate, 
having simple habits; when life was so simple and 
easy that the young matured early, and were able to 
leave the parental care and to shift for themselves. 

Following the period of stability, both in the in- 
dividual and in the race, is a very different stage. A 
new layer has been added, represented in the indi- 
vidual by adolescence, and in the race by all the higher 
stages of civilisation. In the individual, adolescence 
is marked by profound upheaval of all the elements 
of the mental life, by the sudden influx of new in- 
terests, deepened feelings, and a wider outlook upon 
life. New relations among the mental elements are 
established, and the mind seems to find a new centre. 

No one can maintain, however, that the parallel be- 
tween the individual and the race is as precise and 
definite as the law of recapitulation would of itself 
demand. Other laws must be at work according to 
which the mode of development of the individual is 
modified. The period of growth has gradually length- 
ened in the human species, so that, in succeeding gen- 
erations, the child tends to pass through longer and 
longer periods during which he is plastic to the in- 
fluence of his environment, and to his own nascent 
powers. His progress in one direction and another 
is now accelerated, now retarded. Many functions 
which, in the race, have followed physical maturity, 



GENETIC PSYCHOLOGY 31 

now appear before the onset of puberty. At the time 
of adolescence, the child becomes especially susceptible 
to the effects of his environment, and now, while all 
the forces of civilisation are brought to bear upon him, 
he is carried for a time beyond the point of the pres- 
ent stage of civilisation, and becomes the promise of 
what the race may be in the future, when it shall be 
able to hold and organise the advance that adolescence 
points out. Growth, from this plastic period of 
adolescence on to maturity, is thus in a sense a 
fall from a higher state, for of many promises of the 
individual but few at the best can be fulfilled. Habit 
becomes hardened, interests are specialised and nar- 
rowed. This is the critical point, both for the indi- 
vidual and the race. If our species ever degenerate it 
will not be through lack of knowledge and culture, 
nor from relaxation of industries, but because of the 
progessive failure of youth to develop normally to 
maximal maturity. 

From this point of view the development of the 
child becomes one of the greatest scientific problems. 
We can say that childhood, left to itself, tends to re- 
capitulate the race. It is largely the traditions of the 
adult, and the influence of environment, and the ideals 
of the society into which the child is born which sup- 
press, modify and obliterate his inheritance, and ob- 
scure the recapitulatory steps. 

References. — 60, 76, 78, 92, 102, 105, 106, 109, no, 114, 117, 
123, 127, 143, 188, 196, 208, 264, 275, 288. 



CHAPTER V 

INSTINCTS AND FEELINGS 

Psychology has hitherto given most attention to 
the so-called higher or intellectual processes, and has 
neglected the instincts and feelings, which, if the pres- 
ent point of view be correct, are vastly more impor- 
tant and fundamental. These elemental, racial, and 
hereditary parts of the mind are not only far greater 
in volume than thought, but their power in determining 
conduct outweighs the reason many fold. The feel- 
ings and instincts are the deepest parts of our nature, 
because they are racial. The study of them should 
come first in psychology, and should have the highest 
place. The intellect is more an individual problem, 
for it represents acquirement through environment. 

To attempt to define the feelings, to analyse them 
into their elements, or to classify them, or even to 
assign to them their physiological correlates, is less 
important, and less fruitful in every way than to study 
their origin and development and manifold manifesta- 
tions throughout animal life. They are immediately 
known to us, and no elaborate experimental methods 
are necessary to enable us to detect them. The more 
elemental the feeling, the more nearly universal and 
readily understood, the more important is its func- 

32 



INSTINCTS AND FEELINGS 33 

tion, and the greater the need of studying it in all its 
aspects. The most fruitful method of all, in the study 
of the feelings, is to trace their development in the 
young child. Data must be gathered from great num- 
bers of individuals, under different conditions of life, 
and finally all the evidence must be interpreted with 
reference to the appearance of the trait in question 
in all other types of life, animal and human, tracing 
it as far back in its history as possible, ascertaining 
what conditions in the environment have produced or 
perpetuated it. 

One fact may be regarded as established at the be- 
ginning. No emotional trait can be entirely explained 
by the experience of the individual who possesses it. 
All the deepest feelings and habits are inheritances 
from a past, sometimes inconceivably remote. Our 
feelings to-day are what they are, because, in the 
mind, there are remnants of older forms of life. We 
feel as we do toward many objects of nature because 
our ancestors thus regarded them or acted toward 
them. We do not remember this ancient life as we 
remember our own past experiences, but it stirs in us 
in all our fundamental attitudes and feelings, adding 
a momentum of interest or feeling which cannot be 
explained by reference to anything the individual has 
learned. We must assume that the effects of environ- 
ment and manner of life, during the millions of years 
our progenitors have lived upon the earth, have left 
traces in the nervous system which are inherited from 
generation to generation; which have accumulated, 
have become modified, utilised, or partly obliterated 



34 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

in many ways; and which still appear, varying in 
degree and form, in each new individual. Whatever 
has affected the race deeply, whatever has been for 
a long time feared, or contended with, must thus have 
left its marks and have influenced inheritance. We 
must suppose that the deepest things in our own pres- 
ent experiences with nature, and in our social life, will 
in the same way reverberate in other races which shall 
be our descendants, perhaps millions of years to come. 
The evidence for such conclusions is now abundant, 
for in all studies of emotion and instinct that have 
been made by genetic and objective methods many 
facts have been brought to light, showing that the in- 
dividual is dominated in his behaviour by the racial 
traits, often to such an extent that he is but poorly 
adjusted to life in the present environment. He feels 
as his forebears felt in similar situations, millions of 
years ago — situations which now demand quite dif- 
ferent attitudes and reactions. Some of this evidence 
will be mentioned below when the stages of child- 
hood are described in greater detail, and when special 
topics of emotion, instinct, habit, and interest are dis- 
cussed. 

A truly genetic psychology of feeling begins of neces- 
sity with the most primitive of all instincts and feel- 
ings, hunger and the instincts of food getting, for 
these are common to all species of life, past and pres- 
ent. This constitutes the lowest stratum of the feel- 
ing life, and with the sexual impulse, the other great 
fundamental expression of the will to live, is the basis 
of life, and in a sense the foundation of all the higher 



INSTINCTS AND FEELINGS 35 

powers and interests. If we could understand com- 
pletely the part that hunger has played in the develop- 
ment of mind and body, we should know a great part 
of biology and psychology. Food is the first object 
of desire, and all fins, legs, wings, and tails were de- 
veloped either to get food or to escape being the food 
of others. Animals hibernate and migrate, according 
to the food supply. Pleasure is primarily the pleasure 
of digestion, and many of our acts such as laughter, are 
best explained as parts of the function of digestion, 
having had an origin in the movements of eating and 
the disposal of food in the body ; and we can quite rea- 
sonably believe that pain originated in the world in 
the discomfort of hunger. Intelligence grew out of 
the effort to procure food, and even far into man's 
history the need of securing and storing food during 
periods of hardship has been one of the greatest in- 
centives to mental growth. Questions of nutrition un- 
derlie many of the problems of all stages of mental 
life. Many diseases must be studied as primarily de- 
fects in nutrition. We must suppose that the organs 
of the body compete for their nutriment, and that 
within the organism a struggle for existence among 
the parts goes on, quite like the struggle of indi- 
viduals with one another. In a sense, every organ of 
the body is a digestive organ, and even the brain itself 
performs a digestive function. What we call hunger 
is the sum of the unconscious desires of every cell for 
the food it needs. 

The Sexual Instinct. — Without some knowledge of 
the sexual life it is impossible to understand fully many 



36 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

of the higher instincts and feelings, for far more than 
is yet generally recognised, the higher sentiments are 
an off-shoot or irradiation of the more fundamental 
passion. Normally the sexual life comes to ma- 
turity at adolescence in a development of structure and 
function, and in the birth of desire. In its deepest 
significance this means that the individual now enters 
a new life in which interest in the future generation 
must take precedence over interest in self. Connected 
with this primary sexual impulse and function there 
are a great number of secondary functions and mental 
traits, which have grown out of the sexual life of 
the race, and which now make up the raw material of 
interest, enthusiasm, and ideals of life. The in- 
dividual repeats, we say, the history of the race. A 
period of strong feeling, of a predominance of im- 
pulse and unorganised mental life, precedes a period 
of adjustment and control, and a time supervenes, as 
it did in the race, in which there is danger of excess, 
abnormality, and crime. Out of this chaos the higher 
life takes form, and especially the religious life stands 
in close relation to the sexual upheaval of early adoles- 
cence. 

But the parallelism of the race and the individual in 
the development of the sexual life and its irradiations 
has been greatly complicated by the increasing delay 
in maturity of the offspring in higher species of ani- 
mals, and in man. We have said that functions which 
in the race have followed puberty and have depended 
upon the sexual maturity of the organism for their 
appearance, or upon interests growing out of adult 



INSTINCTS AND FEELINGS 37 

life, now are produced before physical maturity, and 
without its incitements. These interests, which the 
child has before maturity, serve the purpose of break- 
ing the force of the new impulses when they suddenly 
appear, as a result of the ripening sexual functions, 
and help to irradiate this impulse out, as it were, into 
broader channels. The child thus practises many 
adult activities, and entertains adult ideals connected 
originally with the sexual life, and its related interests, 
but now appearing, either instinctively without the 
need of sexual maturity, or else conveyed directly to 
the child through his environment. 

Laughter and Humour. — Quite as perplexing to the 
psychologist of the introspective type, and more dif- 
ficult to explain on any other theory than the evolu- 
tionary, are such common emotional acts as laughing 
and crying, the response to tickle, blushing, and many 
peculiar stirrings of feeling, which now seem to have 
no use, and to be but remnants, perhaps, of older, 
more developed psychoses, once useful in the race. 
How old many of these feelings are can be only a 
matter of conjecture, but that they belong to an im- 
memorial past, to a time before man in his present 
form existed at all; and that they may even ante- 
date the beginning of skeletal and muscular structures, 
and may go back to a time when movement and 
stimulus radiated over the whole body, and when no 
co-ordinating nervous system had yet been produced 
— all these are possible and even probable interpreta- 
tions of many of our most familiar states of mind. 

One problem of feeling, in which such interpreta- 



38 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

tions as those just suggested appear to be warranted, 
is that of tickle-feeling, the strange sensitiveness 
to slight tactual impression which extends all over 
the body. Both physical and mental reactions to these 
slight contacts are profound, and reverse the law of 
Weber, according to which sensation increases in 
definite proportion with the increase of the stimulus; 
for, in tickle, the slighter the contact the more con- 
vulsive the movement, and the more intense the feel- 
ing. The most satisfactory explanation of this re- 
markable trait is that in these sensations we have a 
relic of primordial surface feelings; that they repre- 
sent the very oldest stratum of psychic life, in the 
period before the somatic elements had been sharply 
differentiated from the reproductive, and had thus 
become devitalised. In this touch feeling we may, per- 
haps, experience something of the keenness with which 
primitive organisms felt the world about them, and 
the undifferentiated quality of the movement with 
which they responded. Other elements in the tickle 
sense we may suppose belong to later stages, for the 
distribution of it over the body clearly indicates that 
parts vulnerable in combat have become sensitised, 
serving the very practical purpose of protecting the 
organism in times of danger — which again reveals 
to us the severity of the struggle through which the 
race has passed. 

The physical expressions of pleasure or humour in 
laughter must be explained in somewhat similar ways. 
These movements, so utterly inexplicable, so strange 
and even uncanny, when calmly examined, become in 



INSTINCTS AND FEELINGS 39 

part at least intelligible if we understand that in such 
acts the body is performing movements ages old, and 
once connected in a practical way with the states of 
mind (or similar states) which they now express. In 
laughter we may assume that body and mind pass back- 
ward innumerable ages in their history, and take up 
again the use of fragments of functions which remain 
concealed from ordinary experience and effort. In 
laughter, as has been intimated before, old psychoses 
and neuroses connected with primordial skin sensa- 
tions are, it is likely, brought to the surface, and old 
movements which are best explained as once connected 
with the processes of eating and digestion. So, in a 
sense, a laugh means, " that is good enough to eat," 
and the movements of the laugh are movements that 
were once a part of the process of devouring. Thus 
would be explained the open mouth, and the rhythmic 
and convulsive movements, of this remarkable and mys- 
terious act. 

If these facts of every-day life are thus correctly 
interpreted, we should expect that in studying the 
higher emotions connected with wit and humour, one 
must constantly refer back to the lower physiological 
states in which they are expressed. When these 
higher forms of pleasure are studied in the child and 
even in the adult they are found to retain unmistaka- 
bly, even in their most intellectualised form, the traits 
of their lowly forebears. Wit, in many essential char- 
acteristics is similar in nature to the primitive shock 
of the minimal touch, and the laugh from a sense of 
humour is much the same series of physiological events 



4 o GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

as are found in the convulsive movements produced by 
minimal contact upon the skin. The same qualities 
of suddenness and light touch are found in it. Wit 
is a surprise that touches the mind lightly in an unex- 
pected place, and evokes a large mass of uncontrolled 
mental reaction, stimulating, perhaps, the rudimentary 
and unused, and uncontrolled mental elements, that 
are not knit up into the ordinary currents of thought. 

The causes of laughter in childhood show interesting 
evidences of inherited reactions. Very striking is the 
effect of the actions of animals and especially their 
cries, or any imitation of them on the part of adults, 
in causing laughter and merriment in children. The 
profound influences of these things upon the child's 
mind, and the peculiar infectiousness of the reactions, 
may be explained by the supposition that in the growing 
mind of the child there are a great variety of rudi- 
mentary interests and possibilities of function, akin 
to those of animal life. We are potentially animals 
in all our developmental stages, and the spontaneous 
manner in which these old functions sometimes act, 
and the ease with which they respond to the slightest 
touch, accounts for the great pleasure which they pro- 
duce. Broad waves of action are touched off in the 
child's mind by these natural stimuli; old brain tracts 
are opened up, and old pleasure mechanisms are set 
off. 

Other habits of laughter in the child yield to similar 
explanations. The laughter at the slightest suggestion 
of the forbidden or the vulgar is the same. The mind 
is full of old underground paths, submerged physi- 



INSTINCTS AND FEELINGS 41 

ological mechanisms, some connected with the sexual 
life, which are set off without voluntary act, and in op- 
position to will, and serve as a mild shock to the whole 
mental structure. That the laughter reactions develop 
and broaden the rudimentary and potential activities of 
the mind, and are both hygienic and educative, there 
can be little doubt. Those stimuli which reach the 
laughter actions touch the- most spontaneous areas of 
the mind, and it is here, more perhaps than at any other 
point, we can see clearly that the individual contains 
the racial experience in an undeveloped form. The 
chief psychological point to be observed in the expla- 
nation of all such acts as laughter is that the old physi- 
ological reaction is the basis of the higher development. 
The higher mental state takes up, or is connected with, 
the lower and transforms it or utilises it in a larger 
whole. The pleasures and pains, even of the highest 
moral and religious moods, are thus to be regarded as 
superstructures built upon older formations and util- 
ising them. Without the old the new would have no 
depth nor force. 

Play. — Next to hunger and sex, and the primitive 
physiological reactions such as we find in laughter and 
crying, play may be regarded as the most general and 
most racial of activities. Play, considered both from the 
scientific and the practical standpoints, is one of the 
most important problems of psychology. Play is al- 
most the whole life of the child, and everything the 
child does may be considered with reference to the play 
motive that actuates him at all times. In his plays 
and games the child repeats racial history. All such 



42 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

plays as teasing, combat, and collecting may best be 
explained as survivals of racial habit, and without this 
interpretation they must remain unexplained, or ap- 
pear as haphazard and without meaning. In such 
plays the child is using motor co-ordinations bequeathed 
to him from a remote past. These now detached and 
fragmentary habits were once serious adjustments to 
practical situations, the issue of which, whether in life 
or death, depended upon the degree of perfection of 
just these abilities. The view that play is merely practice 
for the serious business of life is thus seen to be partial 
and but incompletely carried out. Play practises not 
only what is coming, but also what has long since past. 
It is often practical only in the sense that by it one 
step after another in the stages of life is kept open 
and preparatory for the next higher stage. Play ex- 
ercises decadent or rudimentary organs which w T ill 
never come to maturity at all, but which will have a 
short period of activity, will serve to stimulate other 
and more lasting functions, and will then die out, or 
remain mere traces in the mental life. They live 
themselves out in a play stage, to be sure, yet they 
perform an all-important function, for without the 
partial development of these rudiments the next higher 
stages are certain to be imperfect. In play, every 
movement is alive with heredity. We rehearse in it 
the lives of our ancestors. We live over again their 
practical deeds. The elements and combinations old- 
est in the race come first; those that are later in the 
race follow, though not without many deviations from 
the phyletic order, which we do not as yet fully under- 



INSTINCTS AND FEELINGS 43 

stand. In a general way, however, the great funda- 
mental racial movements precede, and are followed by 
the finer, more co-ordinated movements, which, like a 
higher geologic stratum, have been deposited upon the 
older formation. This is why the heart of youth 
so goes out to play. In it he seems to remember the 
life of the race, and to revert to an age before work 
began. Play is not mere excess of motor activity. It 
involves all the interests of the child. It is the centre 
of his whole existence. 

Fears. — Fear is a primitive instinct or emotion, and 
the methods of studying it are typical of all investi- 
gations of the feelings. Fear is a much greater emo- 
tion, more far-reaching in its effects, and more mani- 
fold in its expression, than can be discovered by the 
study of any one individual. No one has ever had 
all the fears to which the race is subject, nor experi- 
enced all its degrees and manners of expressions, 
nor do all fears appear at one time of life. It changes 
its objects from one period to another. Much of the 
fear psychosis cannot be studied at all in the adult, 
for it has passed forever from his consciousness. And 
if we have no memory nor conception of our early 
fears, how much less can we discover, by introspection, 
the nature of the fears of other races or species. Only 
by exploring childhood, by studying the fears of many 
individuals, and taking note of its physical manifesta- 
tions in animals, can we form any adequate conception 
of what fear is like. 

Statistics showing the order of frequency of fears 
in many persons reveal the fact that, on the whole, 



44 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

human fears are not practical ; they do not protect 
against the most pressing dangers of our present life, 
but are better adjusted to an older order, in which 
the danger from natural objects, and from unfriendly 
creatures was far greater than now. We do not fear 
that which is most dangerous to life, and many people 
harbour life-long dread of objects which, in our pro- 
tected environment, are practically harmless, Fear of 
fire, of lightning, of storm, of reptiles and insects, of 
darkness, are now out of all proportion to the dangers 
from these sources; yet the dread of these things is 
among the strongest, the most frequent, and the most 
persistent of human fears. 

That fear is learned during the lifetime of the in- 
dividual or is merely imitative, can hardly be believed 
in the face of evidence such as has been men- 
tioned. In fact there is no rational explanation 
of fears which does not take into account racial 
experience. We must assume for many of these fears 
an antiquity far beyond the beginning of human life, 
going back to the earliest experiences of shock in 
primitive beings from which man has sprung. The 
evidence for the correctness of this view does not rest 
upon the prevalence, in the human mind, of any one 
fear which can thus with certainty be declared an- 
cestral, but upon the nature of the whole fear habit 
of man, and especially upon the fact that in the child 
fears at different stages appear to fit conditions of 
life of the race which these stages represent. Fears 
show the same tendencies as do physical traits which we 
know to be ancestral, to obey the laws of development, 



INSTINCTS AND FEELINGS 45 

atrophy, and disappearance which the theory of re- 
capitulation demands. 

If this point of view in interpreting fears be in gen- 
eral correct much becomes plain that would other- 
wise be hidden. We should infer that in our fears of 
celestial objects, and in our profound agitation at wind 
and storm we go back to a time when nature was of 
far more importance to life than it is now. Fears of 
animals, of fur and big eyes, and of noises suggest 
the old fear of enemies, and go back to a time, when 
not to fear these things, now for the most part in no 
way threatening, meant destruction. Fears, still older, 
antedating the possession of definite motor structures 
may be traced in such states as blushing and in other 
changes in the vaso-motor system which accompany 
states of displeasure, and which are not subject to 
control by voluntary effort. However speculative 
such an interpretation of any one fear may be, all 
the facts taken together can hardly leave room for 
doubt that the long struggle on the part of the ances- 
tors of man with the forces of nature has left marks 
in the mind, which, as we should expect, are ex- 
perienced more vividly in the early stages of childhood 
which represent or recapitulate the periods of man's 
emergence from animal life. 

Fear has been a necessary part of man's equipment 
for progress, and it still performs a useful function. 
The lower forms of fear are necessary in order to 
stimulate interest and to lead the mind to higher 
efforts. Fear is the root of many of our strongest 
intellectual strivings now, just as it has always been 



46 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

one of the chief spurs to the acquisition of knowledge. 
Science itself is in large part the creation of fear, 
and it is due to fear-inspired science that many of 
the objects and forces which were once most feared 
now most serve us. The individual passes upward 
through stages of sensitiveness to fear of one after 
another aspect of his environment. These stages are 
normal and to omit them entirely would be as much 
a calamity as it would be to linger in them too long, 
or to retain permanently that which is always passed 
through and overcome when heredity is sound. 

Anger. — What has been said about the methods of 
studying fear, is true also of anger and of other emo- 
tions. Psychology has hitherto made but little prog- 
ress in the study of the emotions because it has failed to 
come in touch with a sufficiently broad area of concrete 
facts of human nature. The same general conclu- 
sion is forced upon the mind by the study of the facts 
about anger, as were established in the case of fear. 
The physical expressions of anger, however refined 
or controlled they may be, are movements of combat 
common to man and animals. Anger is essentially a 
reaction of mind or body suited to a practical situa- 
tion. Such effects as swallowing, and stimulation of 
saliva, frequently mentioned in accounts of anger, are 
connected with the acts of swallowing prey ; while the 
more external manifestations, such as biting, pound- 
ing the head, butting, stamping, making faces, scratch- 
ing, pinching, pulling, kicking, hugging, striking, and 
throwing are one and all movements that have ob- 
viously been useful, and can be shown, in every case, 



INSTINCTS AND FEELINGS 47 

to have had a significant history among the purposive 
acts of the ancestors of man. In our more repressed 
anger of civilised life these movements become sup- 
pressed and often remain as mere remnants, but their 
nature can hardly be mistaken, if they be observed 
closely. 

Like fear, anger must not be regarded as entirely a 
defect in the mechanism of the human mind, however 
ill-adjusted it may seem to the practical business of 
life. Situations still occur that demand anger, rightly 
directed and expressed, and in its more refined form 
it is the motive of much useful activity. To have 
strong passion held in check creates the tension under 
which much of the best work of the world is done. 
Anger thus becomes a stored energy, useful if properly 
conserved, but wasteful and harmful if not controlled. 
And like fear, it performs useful functions in the 
periods of growth of the child by acting as an incite- 
ment to higher interests and the development of pow- 
ers both of action and control. 

Pity. — In pity, we have an example of a more com- 
plex emotion, yet subject to the same methods of en- 
quiry, and to the same kind of interpretation as the 
more simple and more expressive passions. Pity arose 
later in the race than either anger or fear. Its most 
probable origin was in affection for the young, an 
explanation which receives support from the fact that 
it is much stronger in women than in men, forms a 
larger part of their emotional life, and to a much 
greater extent dominates their conduct. Figures show 
that we tend to pity most those who lack those things 



48 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

that we ourselves feel we should most miss, if we were 
deprived of them. We do not, therefore, necessarily 
pity most those who need most, nor the lack of 
what is most needed ; indeed pity very often goes out 
to those who do not suffer at all, and who are not 
deprived of anything they greatly desire or need. 
Young children, for example, pity most those who 
must be out in the dark or storm, suggesting the in- 
tense sensitiveness of the human mind to all that re- 
minds it of the old struggle with the powers of na- 
ture. Older people pity most profoundly those who 
seem to be deprived of the elemental comforts, such 
as food, clothing, shelter, especially if the sufferer 
be a child. Anything that suggests, however slightly, 
hunger in the midst of plenty moves the adult mind to 
compassion. This deep responsiveness to the elemental 
needs of man, very strong even among savages, and 
peculiarly liable at adolescence to extravagant expres- 
sion, indicates, on the recapitulation theory, a vast 
struggle of the race with cold, want, and hunger, in 
the effort to preserve and protect offspring. Next to 
deprivation of primitive needs, weakness, sickness, de- 
formity and death most excite pity. Children most 
pity physical suffering or defects; and adults, to a 
greater extent, have compassion for mental suffering. 
A vast amount of pity is expended, both by children 
and adults, upon those who have no real distress, and 
sometimes when there is only enjoyment or satisfac- 
tion. 

All the extravagances of this deep emotion, and its 
lack of practical expression and fitness to needs of 



INSTINCTS AND FEELINGS 49 

modern situations, can readily be explained by the 
principle of recapitulation. The severity of man's 
struggle has oversensitised his nature to hardship and 
struggle. The child repeats the history of the race, 
and therefore pities, not according to actual suffering, 
but in accord with his own fears and desires, which 
are primitive and unpractical. Even the adult's emo- 
tion is still but imperfectly adapted to the changed con- 
ditions of life that have been brought about by in- 
creased civilisation, science and invention. 

Other feelings have been more or less completely 
studied in the same way, and in each case we find 
that the emotion can be fully explained only in the 
light of the history of the race, and that the higher 
and later feelings can be understood only by re- 
ferring back to the more primary feelings upon which 
they are based. We cannot interpret the higher sen- 
timents, such as we feel in our religious moods, with- 
out going back over the whole history of the individual 
and his ancestry. All the primary instincts, the whole 
range of attitudes toward nature and social environ- 
ment, would need to be studied in order to under- 
stand religion. The emotion of fear, the feelings 
aroused by forest, storm, sky, and celestial bodies ; 
by cloud, sea, wind ; by animals and flowers — all play 
a part in the higher feelings, as well as in the in- 
tellectual life. Not only must the later emotion be 
interpreted by means of the earlier, but all our 
higher intellectual processes must be regarded as 
bound up inextricably with the most elementary re- 
actions toward nature and persons. In fact nothing 



5 o GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

in human life can be understood fully without study- 
ing the primitive feelings. All this can be made more 
clear by close study of one great group of human 
emotions, the religious feelings. 

Religious Instincts and Emotions. — The religious 
life is the centre, we may say, of the higher life of the 
race since it emerged from a state of nature, and of 
the individual in all the years following puberty, dur- 
ing which the acquisition of civilisation is repeated. 
Just as in the preadolescent years the deepest interpre- 
tations of childhood are to be found by the study of 
the primary instincts and feelings, such as hunger, fear, 
and anger, now interest naturally turns to the moral 
and religious life. 

The child passes through stages of religious growth 
in which he repeats the faith and worship of lower 
races — in which he is susceptible in turn to those 
forms of religious expression found in savagery, and in 
all the later steps of religious development in the race. 
He is at first a fetich worshipper, a worshipper of 
sacred stones, trees, animals, celestial bodies, rising 
only later to a grade of feeling and intelligence in 
which nature as a whole becomes an object of awe 
and worship. Like the race, the child passes, in his 
religious concepts, from the specific to the more gen- 
eral. He goes through stages, such as in the race 
are represented by the religions of Mohammed, Con- 
fucius and last of all, of Jesus. The natural culmina- 
tion of this long process of growth is in some form of 
conversion, and with it initiation into the religious 
life of his elders. As manhood and old age super- 



INSTINCTS AND FEELINGS 51 

vene, still other changes take place in the religious 
life which bring it nearer to /the religions of decadent or 
torpid civilisations, such as Buddhism and Brahman- 
ism. 

The religious life is essentially ^problem of human 
psychology, but religion cannot be understood without 
reference to lower stages of the feelings. The higher 
emotion takes up the lower and utilises it or trans- 
forms it into a new product. The complex result 
is a new stage of development. The basis of all re- 
ligious feeling must be sought in the physiological 
states and motor reactions accompanying the adjust- 
ment of all living forms to their' environment. Above 
this is the more conscious experience of the race dur- 
ing millions of years, in which it contended with 
the forces of nature, and in which the emotional life 
was shaped by practical interests. Feelings and at- 
titudes were thus fixed which were transmitted and 
which rise again in every new individual born to the 
race: feelings which form the deepest stratum of the 
religious life and of all other sentiments. „ The child 
is first, we say, a nature worshipper. He is pro- 
foundly influenced, both in thought and in feeling, by 
all of nature's forces and objects. Without such a 
basis, religion would have been impossible in the race ; 
and, in the individual, the highest religious develop- 
ment cannot be reached except through a broad sympa- 
thy with nature. Religious faith is thus based upon a 
much surer foundation than the experience of the 
individual, for, in the child, the experiences of the 
whole race are stirring. The sense of something 



52 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

deeper and more real in the things of nature than is 
revealed to the senses, is the beginning of a belief in 
the supernatural. This is the point at which all myth, 
folk-lore, and fairy tale are produced, both in the mind 
of child and of race. All this the child organises into 
a conception of a supernatural world, and thus he 
comes to dwell in two worlds: a world of physical 
matter and laws, of things seen and felt ; and a world 
of spirits, of things imagined and believed. And this 
is the world of religious faith and belief. 

It is upon such a natural soil of generic mental 
states that the special forms of the dogmatic religions 
subsist and grow, and were it not for the natural 
foundation the later religions would have no depth 
nor force. The child has been busy in all his years 
constructing a world beyond his limited range of 
physical vision ; he has learned how to live every- 
where, in all times ; he has felt, though he knows noth- 
ing of its significance, the stirrings of the whole race 
within his consciousness — and he is prepared to in- 
terpret all this experience religiously, when he shall 
receive the impetus of the great moral interest that 
will come at adolescence. The early ideas and feel- 
ings will be interpreted by the youth, or for him, in 
religious terms, and they will form the truest part 
of his religion. Such a faith, which absorbs these 
deepest, most natural, and truest intuitions of the feel- 
ings, will at its best be far deeper than any mere in- 
tellectual formulation, or creed; more really a part of 
life ; truer than all the proofs of reason. 

Up to the time of adolescence the child has been 



INSTINCTS AND FEELINGS 53 

passing through stages corresponding to the racial pe- 
riods before the final stages of civilised life are 
reached. This child life is predominantly individual; 
it is lived for the sake of itself, and not for any prac- 
tical or ethical ideal. Thus childhood is pre-eminently 
selfish, trying to be and get all it can for itself. The 
child has been fed, sheltered, clothed, and taught; all 
the currents of his environment have tended toward 
him, rather than from him. During these years he has 
been passing from stage to stage, experiencing the 
broadening influences of the ancestral traits that flour- 
ish within his mind. In imagination he tends to 
expand, and to live the life of the race ; in play he be- 
comes all things, and takes all parts for his own su- 
preme pleasure. 

During these years the earlier and more remote 
forebears are being heard from, and the child is re- 
peating their life in his own. But now, in adolescence, 
the nearer progenitors begin to be the predominant 
forces, and through all their influence runs the note of 
service to the race; of readjustment of the life of the 
individual; of subordination of the selfish will to live 
for pleasure, to the love of the future, and of off- 
spring. The self can now no longer expand indefi- 
nitely and live its impersonal experience. It begins 
to specialise ; it must now renounce and undertake 
those activities, and develop those powers and func- 
tions, which will end in producing a home for off- 
spring; it must look forward now to contributing a 
share to the well-being of the race. 

The all-inclusive life thus renounced will presently 



54 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

reappear in the form of a hope for a life beyond this 
life, in another world in which the self, now deprived 
of its universal life, will find all its limitations com- 
pensated. But the immediate effect is conflict. The 
old impulses have carried the individual along in 
channels of interest that have become deep and fixed ; 
he has become adjusted to a manner of life well suited 
to his stage of existence. But now new motives arise 
which strongly impel to habits of life quite at variance 
with his old existence, and so tumult and conflict be- 
gin. The new is recognised as the better way; the 
old seems imperfect and lacking in ideals, an estrange- 
ment from the right and good. If development be 
normal, the new and higher impulses soon predominate, 
and after a period of storm, stress, and conflict, a 
new adjustment gradually supervenes, in which new 
ideals prevail and the life becomes in far-reaching ways 
dedicated to service. All this, with a change of terms, 
may be described as religious conversion. 

Conversion consists, psychologically, of a step from 
egoism to altruism, in which all the impulses are or- 
ganised into a new and higher unity. As it appears in 
its religious form there are four stages, or four dis- 
tinct moments in the experience: (i) A harmony 
within the old life of sin, or self-service. (2) Ten- 
sion, and a sense of sin, error, loss, or decay. (3) 
The stage of losing a burden, the surrender of a 
perverse will. (4) A sense of being saved, of prog- 
ress and growth toward a new and higher plane. 

All these stages, however they may be defined, are 
moments in a change from the life of egoism, natural 



INSTINCTS AND FEELINGS 55 

and necessary to the first period of childhood, to the 
stage of maturity which now comes as a willingness 
of the individual to surrender and die for that which 
must henceforward be its greatest work, the service 
of the next generation. However broad and trans- 
formed this motive may become under the influence 
of moral and religious ideals, its base and centre are 
the parental instincts. All are born twice, once as 
individuals, and once as representatives of the interests 
of the race. The change from the one life to the 
other is deep and fundamental, including all depart- 
ments of life. Religion fixes upon and formulates one 
aspect of this change, and calls it conversion. How- 
ever sudden and unique the crisis of the religious ex- 
perience may seem, normally there is a slow accu- 
mulation and change, extending through the adolescent 
period. The function of religion is to make the trans- 
formation radical and complete. Morality is the re- 
sult ; it is the life of service to the race. 

However much emphasis may be put upon the reli- 
gious nature of conversion, we must also take into 
account the change that it brings or implies in all de- 
partments of life, and its central place for all edu- 
cational theory. Adolescent conversion is a natural and 
normal process, and it occurs whenever growth is per- 
fect. It is the centre of all religion, and it is a re- 
establishment of a union with nature, from which the 
individual seems to himself to have been estranged. 
During this process the love for nature is greatly deep- 
ened, and there is a stronger belief in its spirituality 
and meaning. As an ethical movement, conversion is 



56 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

a reunion of conduct with conscience ; as an intellectual 
change, it is a reunion of the mind with truth ; as 
feeling, it is the closing in once more of the highest 
love with its supreme object. The common element 
in all these aspects of conversion is the feeling of 
stress and estrangement, followed by an ecstatic closing 
in by faith or intuition, with that which is felt to be 
of the highest worth. 

Conversion is not only the centre of the religious 
and biological change at adolescence, but it is also 
the clue to understanding the psychology of the higher 
stages of the history of the race. The conversion mo- 
tive has played a great part in history, and everywhere, 
where civilisation has reached the higher levels, it is 
recognised. Among primitive peoples we find its be- 
ginnings in the form of initiatory rites which sym- 
bolise the entrance of the youth into manhood, and 
into the position of adult responsibility. This is the 
beginning of primitive education. It is a conscious 
effort to establish, in the mind of the youth, the best 
traditions of the race to which he belongs. Much 
in our own religion is symbolic of conversion and the 
adolescent change. The conquest of the world, 
through grief and pain, by the life of Jesus, is its 
greatest expression. The Cross symbolises the adoles- 
cent struggle, in which the old life of self and sin 
comes into sharp conflict with the new and higher mo- 
tives of love and service. Here the movement is more 
than individual ; it is racial. Jesus initiated into the 
world, at a time when it had degenerated as a result 
of individualism, a new religion, and a new culture, 



INSTINCTS AND FEELINGS 57 

based upon love and self-surrender. He himself was 
an adolescent, and most of his disciples were youths. 
Every youth in becoming transformed into a normal 
adult thus passes through the stages through which 
Jesus led the world. 

The story of the Cross and of the life of Jesus is thus 
the great religious masterpiece of the race, most truly 
representing its higher life. In lesser form the 
theme appears in many literatures. Dante is the 
story of adolescence; the Holy Grail, the Golden 
Fleece, Prometheus, Beowulf, and Hiawatha all tell 
the same tale. It is the central theme of religion, 
in its highest form. Through all the lower stages of 
racial religion the child of this higher civilisation 
passes, and the partial and false beliefs by way of 
which he reaches the truer and higher are necessary 
steps. When religion is true and deep, these beliefs 
are never merely cast aside or dropped, but the high- 
est of all faiths retains the power of still carrying the 
germs of the old beliefs, and of sympathising with all 
that it has once loved. Religion is, therefore, to be re- 
garded as a product of inner growth, a natural result 
of the stages of feeling through which man passes. 
Religion has its sanction within us, and all religious 
ceremonies are valuable only as they introduce the in- 
dividual to powers within himself that are unex- 
pressed. The higher truths of religion are revelations 
to a single self from the racial or cosmic self within 
him. 

The religious life presents many other problems of 
psychology, and has both its normal and its abnormal 



58 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

phases. Among the questions which are largely psy- 
chological are: prayer, obedience, sacrifice, chastity, 
asceticism, renunciation, creeds, dogmas, doctrines, 
worship, sacraments, ritual, ceremonies, priests, saints, 
miracles, the Sabbath, symbols, vows, oaths, sects — all 
these and all similar problems are open for psycho- 
logical investigation, and upon psychology rests the 
task of restating them, and of reinterpreting all the 
facts. All such questions are problems of the higher 
emotions, and they must be studied with reference to 
the stages of development of the feelings, both in the 
race, and in the individual. Psychology must reform 
the ancient dogmas by showing the validity of the feel- 
ing elements upon which they rest. By this means the 
essentially true in religion will be reinterpreted in 
scientific terms, and all its practical problems will be 
brought into relation with questions of education and 
other needs of the present day. 

References. — 46, 112, 113, 115, 121, 132, 142, 148, 184, 192, 
196, 202. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE INTELLECT 

Already, in discussing instinct and feeling, a clue 
has been given to the point of view from which the 
intellect must be studied, and indeed to its nature and 
the principles of its development. The feelings and 
instincts make up the greater and the deeper part of 
the mental life. They exist and act below the sur- 
face of consciousness as represented by the experience 
of the individual. They are the expression of the 
power of heredity in us, and are, therefore, older and 
more generic or racial than the more conscious knowl- 
edge functions, and all the content of consciousness 
acquired after birth. These feelings, natural re- 
sponses and interests, as has already been shown, are 
the truest and most significant attitudes toward all 
the great problems of life; for the truth is best ex- 
pressed by what we do or are impelled to do or to 
think when we act in accordance with our deepest in- 
stincts. 

The problem of the psychology of the intellect is 
to discover the relation of the intellectual processes, 
both in the individual and in the race, to the life of 
feeling and movement which underlies them. Only in 
this way can the nature of thought and the principles 

59 



60 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

according to which mental training must be conducted 
be understood; or the validity of the higher reason- 
ing processes judged. At every point we must return 
to the powers, physical and mental, which man has 
in common with animals, if we would understand the 
mind. Consciousness, though the latest, is not neces- 
sarily the highest, nor the most central, part of mind. 
In fact when the mind is most alert in doubt or thought, 
acting with strained and concentrated attention, it is 
farthest from that which is most genuinely mental, or 
the expression of soul life. The deepest thought is 
expressed in movement. Attention is thought inter- 
rupted on its way to action. The conscious life is 
unorganised and disjointed, while life is carried on 
by the deeper instincts and impulses in an even, unin- 
terrupted flow. In thought, personality tends to be- 
come confused and superficial : in action we show our- 
selves as we truly are. 

The conception of intellect as a superstructure built 
upon the far greater and more complex life of the un- 
conscious explains many facts, and becomes the cor- 
ner-stone of all intellect-training. This is the fact 
upon which the views of mind which posit a sub- 
liminal self or overself are based. It is the conscious- 
ness below the surface that dominates trance and all 
those other abnormal states in which the intellect ap- 
pears sometimes to have supernatural powers. No 
other powers are at work than those seen in the or- 
dinary working of the intellect, and there is no need 
of assuming anything except the racial forces which 
operate in everyone, and dominate the conscious life, 



THE INTELLECT 61 

though it is natural that the deep interest which all 
take in the unconscious mind, and which shows the 
longing of the individual to live a more complete life, 
should often lead to the interpretation of the powers 
of the unconscious as supermundane. 

The powers of the feelings and impulses upon the 
intellectual life are most directly evidenced in those 
states of mind we call faith and belief, and in the 
imagination. Our beliefs represent the life of the 
race, are larger and more potent than the experi- 
ence of the individual, are the deciding factors in 
all the important situations of life, and are the powers 
behind the activities of imagination, dreams, and in- 
deed all the workings of interest, attention, and ap- 
perception. The best example of the dominance of 
intellect by belief, and belief by the unconscious will 
is the myth : that great body of truth which has grown 
out of the feelings of the race, and has created a 
world, which, because it exists nowhere, is real every- 
where. This process, however, is not exceptional, but 
is typical of the whole life of intellect, especially in 
the growing child. The growing mind repeats the 
racial myth-making in many ways. Thoughts are 
constantly being made from feelings, and the sense 
world and the fancy world are often inextricably 
mixed, in the child, as in the savage, and, indeed, in 
the most highly trained and intellectual adult. The 
mind is constantly busy interpreting feeling in terms 
of sense, and projecting the feeling into the practical 
life at every point. The child, especially, lives in two 
worlds at the same time ; the world of sense, and the 



62 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

world of fancy; the world of his own outer experi- 
ence, and the world of the racial experiences, which 
well up within him. He thus lives everywhere,, and 
at all times. Moreover his world contains not only 
the past but the future, for out of the feelings ideals 
are formed, and projected ahead of experience, form- 
ing a schema which guides and gathers experience, and 
moulds conduct and interest. 

Truth, for the child, is thus only in part a matter 
of sense experience. He is constantly at work creating 
for himself, out of his own instincts, a body of truth, 
to use in his own self-development, in ways but little 
controlled by his environment. Later the same cre- 
ative force of mind, if development be normal, will 
be at work shaping the forces of the moral and re- 
ligious life. Instinct, rather than sense experience and 
critical thought, will still be the director of thought 
and the judge of the validity of it. This view of in- 
tellect is beginning to find its way into the psychological 
methods of studying belief, especially religious faith. 
It is seen that the evidence of feeling strikes deeper 
than historical criticism. Even in cases in which his- 
torical evidence and reflection cause doubt, truth may 
still remain founded upon feeling. 

The intellect, though it may seem to be impractical, 
and to develop in ways that appear for the time to 
antagonise rather than help in the individual's effort 
to adjust himself to the demands of a practical life, 
will be found on closer scrutiny to be as lawful in 
its growth as any other function. In the principle of 
recapitulation will be discovered the explanation of its 



THE INTELLECT 63 

vagaries, its persistent refusal to be bound by sense 
experiences and by the practical needs of the mo- 
ment. The mind tends to pass through stages through 
which the mind of the race has gone. We do not 
actually remember the racial experience, in any such 
way as Plato and Wordsworth might be interpreted 
to think, but the mind passes through stages in which 
rudimentary and hitherto dormant functions, whether 
of brain or mind, spring into life. These nascent stir- 
rings are the basis of interests. They form centres 
about which experiences cluster; they influence and 
colour all that the intellect for the time does; they 
establish belief and stimulate fancy, in ways already 
made plain. Some of these functions arise, never again 
to decline during the life of the individual; some are 
transitory, flourish for a time, and then decay — serv- 
ing the purpose of arousing the next higher function, 
or having accumulated just such experiences as will 
later be utilised in the process of adaptation. The 
intellectual life is a growth, a series of stages in which 
there is always a partial adaptation to the practical 
needs of the individual, while all the time there is 
progress, by an apparently circuitous route, toward a 
permanent adjustment, in adult life, to the demands of 
the environment. Thought at each stage is in excess 
of the needs of that stage; but from the excess of 
thought and fancy the practical intellect is shaped by 
the needs of life ; and the mind, which is inclined by 
nature to roam everywhere, to be free and to follow 
the instincts and racial feelings, is finally domesticated 
and harnessed to definite tasks. 



64 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

We can now take up somewhat in detail the char- 
acterisation of the intellectual development of the 
child, comparing him with the race. A systematic ac- 
count of the intellect might well begin with a study 
of the space consciousness, the background of all 
thought. We should find that its roots antedate clear 
consciousness, and are embedded in the primitive sen- 
sitive elements of the contractile tissues of the body, 
and that these qualities still provide, at the beginning 
of life, the materials or foundation upon which the 
higher senses of sight and touch proceed to construct 
a spacial order. 

All the higher senses arise as gradually differ- 
entiated and specialised forms of touch. The sense 
of touch is, therefore, the archaeological field of psy- 
chology. In it can be found the oldest stratum of 
the intellectual life. In the young infant the pre- 
dominance of the senses of touch can still be noticed ; 
and there are many other traces of archaic traits 
throughout the sensory life. There is not, as in the 
adult, a continuous or organised life of sense, but sen- 
sations arise in isolated areas. Each hand has at first 
a life separate from the other sensory areas. So, too, 
the mouth and the eyes. Finally these areas of sense 
are brought together. The mouth-hands, the hand- 
hands, and the eye-hands unite to form the objects 
that adults know as hands. So with other parts of 
the body. The self is gradually put together from 
sensations. Everything is at first experimental and 
fragmentary. The child investigates and feels, using 
first the mouth as an organ of search, as would be 



THE INTELLECT 65 

expected if racial steps are followed, and later trans- 
fers the work of experimentation to the hands. 

In the learning of language the child shows again 
the peculiar circuitous manner in which he develops. 
He never begins with the sounds that seem easiest to 
the adult, or the most elementary, but in a way all 
his own proceeds to acquire his language, by a process 
of learning and then apparently forgetting, quite at 
variance with the direct route that would seem to 
the adult most desirable and economical. It is evi- 
dent that all the first steps in the development of lan- 
guage are prompted by inner impulse, quite inde- 
pendently of what the child hears. Later he uses the 
elements of language he has thus acquired by his own 
initiative, in imitating the combinations he hears, but 
in the first instance he produces all from his own na- 
tive resources. 

Habits and interests grow from within in the same 
way, some to flourish for a short time, and then to 
disappear, some to become permanent. All through 
the earlier years of childhood interests are being 
evolved, and by means of them the sensory materials 
that pour in are organised and controlled. The child, 
moreover, does not merely wait for his experience, but 
seeks it and selects it in ways entirely his own. The 
intense ear-hunger and eye-hunger of these early 
years is the chief means of education of his mind, and 
for a long time the craving for sensory experience is 
the most marked characteristic of the intellect. Es- 
pecially is there great hunger for experience of nat- 
ural objects, so that all out-of-doors is none too large 



66 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

to supply the child with materials for his mind-build- 
ing. This is one reason why the country is the normal 
environment for the young child. There the spon- 
taneous interest in objects can be fully satisfied, and 
the mind receives the nourishment it most craves. It 
can safely be said that nine-tenths of the child's think- 
ing is about either people or objects in nature. People 
furnish him his practical experience, set the limits for 
his conduct. Objects stimulate his imagination and 
give him the materials out of which he builds his 
world of fancy. How entirely the child is dependent 
for the content of his thought upon what he can per- 
ceive for himself with his senses, and how utterly 
incapable he is of obtaining knowledge through words 
can be seen by examining closely the content of any 
young child's mind. 

The nature of the child's thinking, and the charac- 
teristics of his mental development generally, can best 
be understood by the study of his attitudes towards 
natural objects, and the way in which he thinks about 
them, noticing how the commonplace experiences of 
everyday life are eked out by fancy under the stimulus 
of spontaneous interest or instinct; and how, too, the 
ideas thus created stimulate the most practical activi- 
ties, help in the adjustment to environment, and form 
points to which learning, imposed upon the child by 
the adult, may be attached. 

The sun, the moon, clouds, the phenomena of light 
and dark, fire, heat, frost and cold, animal and plant 
life, inanimate things, all come into the closest touch 
with the mind of the child, excite the imagination, 



THE INTELLECT 67 

and supply much of the raw material for his thought. 
All this goes on independently of all schooling, and 
resembles in character the free mental activity of the 
savage or primitive man. In much of his thought the 
child is creative; he repeats the process by which epic 
and myth have been produced in the race. He thinks 
in rhythm or rhyme, uses analogy, holds inconsistent 
thoughts in the same conception, is fragmentary, im- 
aginative, suggestible — in all these ways repeating 
the traits of racial development. 

One may learn about the growth of the intellect 
either by examining racial literatures or by investi- 
gating the contents of the child's mind. In either case 
a broad objective method is demanded. No one tribe 
possesses all the mental capacities of the race, and 
in the mind of one child but a small part of child 
thought can be found. But by putting together the 
fancies of many children, all that the race has ever 
thought or fancied can be brought to light. The child 
mind contains precisely such fancies as those from 
which all mythologies and hero stories, and most of 
the religion and science of the world, have been cre- 
ated. 

The child's interest in clouds, and the fertility of his 
thought in constructing cloud fancies shows well the 
intellectual type of the growing mind. There is al- 
most nothing the imagination of the child does not see 
in the clouds, and so deep is this interest, so intense 
the emotional effects, that one must believe that in 
cloud fancies of the child, one sees an example of the 
power of ancient traces in the mind to arouse its 



68 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

activities : that these fancies refer back to, indeed are 
vestiges of, a time when man was at the mercy of 
uncontrollable forces in nature, and when to watch 
the sky for signs of storm and fair weather was a mat- 
ter of life and death. Especially at adolescence, when 
the effect of clouds upon the imagination is so great, 
we seem to see reproduced the mythopoeic faculty 
of the race which in earlier times, when the imagina- 
tion was uninhibited by knowledge, evolved the old 
Aryan nature deities ; and in later times, in Greece and 
Rome, produced the more humanly personified gods of 
nature. 

Investigations of the child's thoughts about heat 
and cold show similarly the profound effect upon the 
mind of these once more vital phenomena. It is when 
the fancies of many children are brought together that 
the relation of the racial mind to the child is best 
seen. For, though each child may contribute but 
little, all together have created a system of thought, 
almost a logically constructed philosophy or cosmology, 
suggesting irresistibly the origin of philosophies and 
religions in the primitive mind. Studies recently made 
of the child's fancies about Jack Frost show the cre- 
ative imagination at work in the construction of a 
theory, doing the very thing the race has done in creat- 
ing the great myths. For Jack Frost is a creation of 
the modern child, and he is still in the making and 
in an unconventionalised form. 

To other natural phenomena the child's mind re- 
sponds with equal fertility. The wind profoundly af- 
fects the imagination, and it is probably the means of 



THE INTELLECT 69 

conveying to the child, as it did to the race, for the 
first time, the great lesson of the reality and causal 
efficiency of things unseen, and therefore is an aid to 
religious development. This is shown by the fact that 
in many languages words for soul and spirit are de- 
rived from words for wind. 

Rocks, stones, and minerals also have their story 
and lore in the mind both of the child and the sav- 
age. Many games of children suggest the use of stones 
and sticks as fetiches, and they have to the child's mind 
a meaning and are a language, one must think, only 
because of the long experience with the objects of 
nature on the part of man. 

The responsiveness of the child's mind to the in- 
fluences of the forest, the power of seasons and twi- 
light to stimulate the imagination, the effects of the 
dark, all give clues to the nature of the intellect and 
its relations to the feelings, and show how the fan- 
ciful and the practical have grown up together. We 
cannot at all understand the mind of the child with- 
out taking into account the effect of all these agencies 
upon the minds of his progenitors. The cycle of sun- 
light, shadow and the dark, so full of vital interest 
to man, has had a deep influence upon the mind, es- 
pecially in times before the rise of scientific knowl- 
edge. The child's fancies show clearly how thought 
must have played about these mysteries. Being in- 
nocent of those attitudes of criticism which consti- 
tute the scientific habit, his thought is positive and 
free, like that of primitive man — directed by his de- 
sires and fears. In the sun myths, especially, is 



jo GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

seen the closest similarity between the child's and 
the savage's thought. In both there is a first stage 
of disinterested acceptance of things as they are ; then, 
when fancy begins to play with the material, there 
arises a great diversity of interpretations, but showing 
certain fundamental modes of mental action, common 
to all. Indeed the sun myths mark what may be called 
a stage of development of the intellect, both in the 
race and in the individual, and show, in a typical form, 
characteristic moments of the growth of the intelli- 
gence. 

The effect of the moon upon the imagination and 
reason forms another interesting chapter in the ge- 
netic psychology of the intelligence. The moon stands 
in the closest relations, of all the natural objects, 
to the pleasant and sentimental moods of man. Its 
influence is especially seen in the adolescent mind, 
which weaves it into thought and fancy, and even 
takes it up into the religious life, in precisely the 
same way that it has entered into the creative fancy 
of the race, and has appeared in folk-lore, myth, and 
poetry. 

One cannot, therefore, understand the intelligence 
of man without first perceiving how great a part of 
the mental content has been, and is still, in the child, 
made up of thoughts and fancies about the objects 
of nature. It is not a mere accessory of mental 
growth, but is the very foundation upon which it is 
built. Nature objects have not only furnished the 
content of thought but the attitudes toward them have 
supplied the motive for thought, and have directed 



THE INTELLECT 71 

and even created type-forms of thinking which we use 
in our practical activities. 

The child's mind passes through stages of think- 
ing, just as the body grows by periods. Those minds 
that are richest in rudimentary forces seem to linger 
longest in the racial stages, and to utilise them most 
fully. The child's mind tends to live in one stage at 
a time, and his interests and his type of thought ap- 
pear for a time to remain consistent to the spirit 
of that stage. He lives an intellectual life determined 
in form and content by the selective qualities of his 
own inner forces, and although learning may go on 
at the same time in accord with the demands of the 
adult, and the mind may be imposed upon to almost 
any extent, absorption, assimilation, and growth take 
place naturally only along lines of the interests and 
the methods chosen by nature. 

References.— 7, 22, 23, 33, 35, 40, 61, 63, 115, 116, 135, 184, 
186, 187, 190, 191, 194, 196, 284. 



CHAPTER VII 

DEVELOPMENTAL STAGES 

Thus far we have discussed general principles of 
development, and have shown their application to 
problems of instinct, emotion, and intellect. Now, 
a brief survey of the same ground may be taken from 
another standpoint, observing how the child as an 
individual passes from one stage to another, and the 
manner in which this process illustrates further the 
laws that have been laid down. 

For a period of twenty-five years the human being 
is passing through a series of stages, each distinct 
in itself and transitory, with characteristics of its 
own, yet all leading on by a lawful, though circuitous, 
process to a complete development in the adult form. 
Transition, succession of stages, is the chief charac- 
teristic of childhood. 

Beginning with life before birth, and following the 
growth of the child on to maturity it is very clear 
that the changes, though subject to law, are not or- 
derly in the sense of being a gradual enlargement 
of what already exists. Each stage is different from 
that which precedes and follows, as though it were 
intended to be a final stage. But presently its char- 
acteristics begin to change, there is a short period 

72 



DEVELOPMENTAL STAGES j$ 

of transition and another well-marked stage super- 
venes, which does not appear to have grown out of 
the preceding, but rather to have taken its place. 

The unevenness and irregularity in the growth of 
the child has led to many attempts at classification 
of its periods. Although many marked changes can 
be made out — and in fact each function can be traced 
through definite stages, and within larger movements 
functions can be seen to have periodicities of their 
own — yet at least four great divisions of the whole 
course of development stand out with sufficient clear- 
ness to be described as eras of growth, and the study 
of the characteristics of each reveals principles of the 
utmost importance for a science of education. 

The four main periods or developmental stages are 
(i) Infancy; (2) Childhood; (3) Youth; (4) Ado- 
lescence. Each of these stages has such well-marked 
traits that the same individual, at different times in 
his life, may seem almost to acquire a new character 
or to become a different organism. More precise ob- 
servation could detect intermediate stages, to which 
names might be assigned. Following each of the 
periods mentioned is a more or less clearly defined 
transitional period, partaking of the characteristics 
both of what has gone before and of that which is to 
follow. 

Infancy, the period from birth until the end of 
the second year, is especially a time of physiological 
development and sensory experience. Childhood, 
from two to eight, is characterised as a time of im- 
aginative activity. Youth, from eight to twelve, is a 



74 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

period of practical adjustment. Adolescence is a 
time in which the emotions dominate. 

Infancy includes the period from birth to the com- 
pletion of certain physical and mental changes that 
may take place as early as the eighteenth month, of 
which walking is the most important. Growth dur- 
ing all this time is very rapid, and physical changes 
are continuous. During this period the infant appears 
so different in every trait and feature from the adult 
that he would seem the greatest of mysteries, did 
not the principles of evolution throw light upon the 
order of his growth. The shape of the body, move- 
ments such as grasping and climbing, the shape and 
proportions of the internal organs, all indicate that 
the characteristics belonging to the simian period of 
racial existence are now most dominant and are strug- 
gling with the later strata of human characters. 
During all this period, and on through childhood, 
there will be many occurrences that can be explained 
only by evolutionary principles. The feeding habits 
of the child, his play, modes of self-defence, curiosity, 
social instincts, all require study with reference to the 
stages of life in the race centring about the simian 
age. 

From the end of the second year to about eight is 
the period of childhood. In comparison with years 
preceding and following it, it is marked by slow increase 
in height and weight. At three years the brain has 
attained two-thirds its adult weight, and at seven al- 
most the full brain weight has been reached, though 
in its finer structure it is still very incomplete. All 



DEVELOPMENTAL STAGES 75 

through childhood physical activity is excessive, but 
is neither strong nor well co-ordinated. The large, 
or fundamental, and not the fine, accessory muscles 
are most called into play, though from six to eight 
there is a rapid increase in muscular control. 

These years are a time of free activity, naturally 
devoted almost entirely to play. Doing is for its own 
sake, and not for the sake of the product. Mental 
action is much like the physical action, rapid but un- 
controlled. The mind is receptive to a remarkable 
degree. The child is an eager seeker after all kinds of 
knowledge ; the attention is active, but flits readily from 
point to point. The memory is good, often sur- 
prisingly minute and accurate. Thought is active, 
but disconnected and fanciful, due to lack of control 
by dominating interests. The period from four to 
five seems especially one of imaginative fertility. The 
mind is full of fancies. The play is highly fanciful 
and inventive. So much, indeed, does the child of 
this age live in an imagined world that he is often 
quite self-sufficient, and needs no companion. The 
function of all the play of body and mind seems now 
to be to co-ordinate and direct all the wealth of sense 
and inner experience that has been so rapidly pro- 
duced in the growing years. 

The child is not critical, either of self or others. 
He is willing to try his hand at everything; he ac- 
cepts without much question whatever is done for him 
or told him and has no hard and fast notions of law, 
either of nature or society to trammel his thinking 
or acting. The mind is suggestible and imitative more 



76 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

than at any other period of life. Both the moral and the 
aesthetic life are crude, like the savage's. The whole 
life of the child is unformed and in the rough, but 
rich, full, and active. This is analogous to what we 
find on the physical side: a brain relatively large, but 
lacking in co-ordination and delicacy of structure. 

At the end of childhood comes a transition period, 
marked by several changes, the full significance of 
which is not understood. The most noticeable 
change is in the body. Rate of growth, both as re- 
gards height and weight, is distinctly retarded, and 
the brain almost stops increasing in size. Many have 
noticed a tendency to physical weakness and a low- 
ered resistance to fatigue and disease. Movements 
become less spasmodic and less rapid. Muscular 
control is decidedly better. Mentally, too, the child 
appears to be undergoing change or readjustment, and 
is on the whole making clear progress toward a more 
adult type of thinking. Still, at the very end of this 
time, there is a period of heightened imagination. The 
child is likely to be troubled by fears and other emo- 
tional disturbance. In girls the doll interest is now at 
its height. From this time on it will steadily decline. 
In a sense, this period seems to be a preadult life, a 
time in which traits that racially belong to maturity 
cast their shadows before. 

That the passing traits of the child resemble the 
characteristics of the savage in many particulars can- 
not be denied. In regard to fickleness and lack of 
power of long-sustained effort, optimism, and free- 
dom from care and work, close relation to nature, the 



DEVELOPMENTAL STAGES 77 

tendency to personify natural objects, and to confuse 
the animate and the inanimate, in readiness to imitate, 
and to act upon suggestion, the child and primitive 
man are much alike. Both child and savage confuse 
the real and the ideal, the waking life and the dream 
life. They are alike in the manner in which they 
see resemblances, in their use of analogy, in the way 
in which they construct language forms. The say- 
ings of the child much resemble the folk-lore of primi- 
tive peoples. 

Though all must admit the agreement of the child 
and the savage in many of these characteristics, some 
would maintain that the cause of the resemblance is 
the lack of experience common to both, and that 
it is, therefore, superficial and without deep signifi- 
cance. But it is difficult to examine the evolutionary 
evidence without coming to the conclusion that the 
similarity of savage and child has a deeper mean- 
ing. The child certainly recapitulates racial experi- 
ence, in part as the result of an inner growth prin- 
ciple. In the earlier stages this can be seen clearly, 
though the resemblances become more and more ob- 
scured with age and complexity of experience. We 
must infer that the rapid changes in temperament and 
mental habit during childhood are caused by the same 
growth force that is at work during infancy pushing 
the mind and body up through recapitulatory stages. 
Though it is impossible to find in later childhood defi- 
nite stages, which as a whole can be said to corre- 
spond to racial steps, it can be claimed at least that 
stages of childhood represent fragments of racial 



78 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

stages, and that in his nascent periods the child is 
truly a representative of the race. Other forces are 
at work which make him depart widely from the 
precise order of racial evolution. The fixed traits 
and habits that recapitulation tends to preserve and 
hand on intact are taken up and transformed in the 
process of adaptation in a way not as yet fully under- 
stood. 

Youth, which can roughly be placed as the period 
from eight to twelve years, is a unique time in human 
life, very interesting when considered from the ge- 
netic standpoint. Now the child has completed teeth- 
ing, the brain has acquired nearly the adult size, 
health is almost at its best. Activity is greater and 
more varied than it has ever been before, or ever 
will be again. There is great endurance, strong vi- 
tality, excellent resistance to mental fatigue. The 
child now acquires a life of his own outside the 
home circle; his interests will never again be so in- 
dependent of adult influences. The senses are very 
acute. There is great immunity to exposure, dan- 
ger, and temptation. Reason, true morality, religion, 
sympathy, love, and aesthetic enjoyment are but little 
developed. The rules of the adult seem to the youth 
alien and arbitrary. The mind is keen and alert, 
reactions are immediate and vigorous. The memory 
is quick, sure, and lasting. Never again will there be 
such susceptibility to drill and discipline; such plas- 
ticity to habit or readiness of adjustment to all new 
conditions. Now the finer movements are made with 
ease, and manual skill is easily acquired. There is 



DEVELOPMENTAL STAGES 79 

interest in the product of activity, and no longer en- 
tirely in the activity for its own sake. Mental action 
begins to be better controlled, more connected, and 
more commonplace than in childhood, though the 
imagination is still active. Conduct becomes to a 
greater extent reasoned; and it is no longer entirely 
submissive to the control of parents and teachers. 
The child begins to peer into motives, and no longer 
looks at effects alone; so there is more fairness in 
dealing with others, and better appreciation of rea- 
soned behaviour on the part of those who control 
him. 

This increased sensibleness of the child is shown 
in many ways. He is no longer uncritical of his 
own work, nor so impulsive in trying his hand at 
everything. He is more critical of others. His be- 
liefs are more fixed and definite, and more dependent 
upon reason. He is less ready to accept on faith 
what is told him. In a word, the mind has now come 
to be adjusted to an outer order, and action and 
thought are no longer controlled by inner impulses. 
There is less originality, but more strength and or- 
der, 

Youth, thus described, appears to be a time when 
the crude outlines of childhood are filled in ; a transient 
completeness is consummated, when the mind has 
more nearly an adult form than in the preceding or 
immediately following period. This is the time when 
children are so often called little men and women; 
for their ways are likely to become fixed as though 
for a lifetime. Childhood with its limitations is ac- 



80 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

cepted without complaint, and life goes on in an even 
flow. 

Soon, however, this adjustment is to be broken up. 
Many of the traits, apparently so stable, will disap- 
pear or decline in the next stage; but while it lasts 
it presents a definite picture of a well-adjusted ex- 
istence, suggesting a very interesting parallel in racial 
development. Youth seems to be a culmination of 
one line of development, appears to represent what 
was once a long-maintained and stable period of 
simple existence ; when, in a warm climate, the young 
of our species once shifted for themselves independ- 
ently of any further parental care, much earlier than 
now. Heredity, in this stage of youth, is more stable 
and more secure, because older and better estab- 
lished in the race. The elements of personality are 
few, but very well organised on an effective and 
simple plan. These qualities of the youth are much 
older than the traits of present civilisation, and they 
represent habits that existed untold ages before the 
later human attributes were developed. The child 
seems mature because many of his traits are precisely 
those that have belonged to an earlier adult life; 
traits which, in an ever-lengthening stage of imma- 
turity in the individual have been left behind. Physi- 
cal maturity now comes later, but many qualities 
which once accompanied it recur at the time of youth, 
which was once the age of maturity. The mind is 
filled with rudimentary organs, instincts belonging 
to an earlier age, which now develop, but leave the in- 
dividual later immune to them; instincts which, if 



DEVELOPMENTAL STAGES 81 

motived by the full powers of maturity would become 
dangerous to civilisation, as they do even now in 
rare cases in which, during the period of adolescence, 
they are sometimes hypertrophied. 

Last comes adolescence, the study of which is full 
of interest for philosophy, psychology, and education. 
The whole period may be said to extend from about 
thirteen to thirty-three; — years which, considered as 
a whole, must be interpreted to mean the coming to 
full maturity, and the acquirement, by the individual, 
of the latest stratum of racial development. 

The first two years may be called the pubertal pe- 
riod. During this time the organs of reproduction 
come to maturity. This period extends from about 
twelve or thirteen to fourteen or fifteen, but differs 
in the two sexes. Until the end of youth, growth in 
boys and girls has been much the same; but at the 
end of the twelfth year in girls, and the fourteenth 
in boys, there is a period of rapid acceleration in 
growth, lasting for about two years, and it is at the 
end of that time that the signs of physical maturity 
are established. This is one of the most clearly 
marked transitional periods of life. Besides the 
more special changes, the body as a whole shows 
signs of rapid maturing. In girls the figure becomes 
more round, the pelvic bones change, both in shape 
and in position, and the gait is altered. In boys mus- 
cular strength increases greatly, and the whole body 
begins to take on adult characters. The features 
change to their adult form; new resemblances appear 
suddenly, as though there were a struggle among 



82 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

hereditary tendencies for permanent establishment. 
The voice changes. The health is likely to be ca- 
pricious. Nervous disorders, especially emotional 
derangement, are prevalent. Abnormal cravings, im- 
pulses, and habits often take possession for a time. 
Everything, in fact, indicates profound changes and 
upheaval within the organism. The growth force 
now becomes susceptible to influences from without 
and from within, and there is danger of disorder and 
disease. The great evil threatened is that the indi- 
vidual may not now be able to come to full and com- 
plete maturity. Many show the effects of imperfect 
completion ; of having been arrested or perverted, 
in some part or function, at some stage short of per- 
fection. This occurs in all degrees, from very slight 
disturbance of balance, or deficiency in some one 
function, to profound abnormality of the whole per- 
sonality. 

The cause of the phenomena of adolescence just 
described, considered physiologically, is the sudden 
ripening of functions and parts connected with the 
sexual life, which, besides causing many secondary 
changes in the body, send to the brain a great mass 
of new impressions, upsetting the old order and bal- 
ance. The co-ordination of the parts is, as it were, 
broken up for the purpose of introducing new ele- 
ments. The whole mental and physical personality 
suddenly becomes larger, richer, and more complex, 
and at the same time is disordered and put out of 
adjustment. Many hitherto dormant rudimentary or- 
gans of both body and mind appear, which seem each 



DEVELOPMENTAL STAGES 83 

to obey a law of its own, some now flourishing tem- 
porarily, some becoming permanent. The whole or- 
ganism now becomes more plastic, and subject to all 
sorts of influence; individuality is more pronounced, 
and individuals now differ more from one another 
than in the previous stages. In a word, the simple 
order of life that has prevailed in childhood has been 
broken up by the introduction of new elements, and 
a new adjustment, inner and outer, is demanded. 

The changes that occur in the mental life during 
adolescence are so many and so radical that it is 
difficult to describe them all. They are to be inter- 
preted as due to the appearance of old hereditary 
factors, which now struggle for ascendency in the 
life of the individual. Perhaps the most significant 
change is the excessive craving for all kinds of sense 
experiences. The impulse is to touch life at every 
point, and to expand in every faculty. The centre 
of all the changes may be said to be the moral life. 
Indeed the whole meaning of adolescence is moral. 
The child has suddenly become an adult, and the 
duties of maturity begin to press for recognition. 
He has changed from a self-centred individual, liv- 
ing physically and mentally for himself, to a ma- 
tured organism, whose life is henceforth to be lived 
as a service to the race. This change involves the 
whole body and mind, and is to be interpreted bio- 
logically. It has been recognised in every race, and 
its moral import has found expression in many forms. 
Its most conspicuous expression has been recognised 
as religious conversion, but conversion is only a focal- 



84 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

ised form of what is going on in every part of 
the organism. However expressed, adolescence is a 
time of moral crisis, when evil strives to get posses- 
sion of the life. But when growth is normal the youth 
soon emerges from this crisis with impulses well in 
hand and directed toward normal activities. 

This changed and deepened note is felt in every 
part of the emotional life. The whole pleasure and 
pain field is greatly widened. Routine becomes irk- 
some and there is struggle against authority. The 
consciousness Of self is exaggerated, and there is likely 
to be both increased selfishness and altruism. The so- 
cial instinct is deeply affected, with oftentimes changes 
from extreme sensitiveness to indifference. Love of 
nature is often remarkably deepened, and nature 
seems to become a new revelation to the youth. There 
is love of solitude, craving for wandering, stirrings 
of the impulse to break away from the parental home, 
and to establish a new and wider environment. 

Taking into account all such facts it is difficult to 
explain the upheaval of adolescence on any other the- 
ory than that now the stage of later civilisation in 
the race has gained the ascendency in the individual. 
The youth had been adjusted to an older order, cor- 
responding to the pre-civilised stage of human life, 
a life relatively simple, easy, and secure. Now, just 
before sexual maturity, which has been delayed 
to allow the growing individual to utilise all possible 
hereditary forces, the last stratum of racial life bursts 
into the consciousness. At first there is upheaval. 
Even after the first two years of the new life adjust- 



DEVELOPMENTAL STAGES 85 

ment to practical conditions is less perfect than in 
youth ; but now the individual has a breadth and depth 
of foundation for building a much greater structure. 
This age now represents the time when, in the race, 
struggle became more mental than physical. There- 
fore the effect of environment is less directly upon 
conduct, and more upon feeling and instinct. It is an 
age before the dawn of history, in which the great 
thoughts of the race were in the making; it is a time 
that has faded from the conscious memory of man, 
leaving no trace, except in myth, story, and tradition. 

These are the reasons why adolescence is one of 
the most important problems of the new genetic psy- 
chology. For in adolescence there is still the trace 
from which we may reconstruct the history of the 
race. In this transitory stage the manner of thought 
and feeling of our progenitors is revealed. This 
story of the effort of the race to reach anew spiritual 
level is told in every literature. It is the theme in 
all mythical creations and all ethnic Bibles. The 
Bible of Christianity itself is such a story of the 
history of the race, more complete than any other in 
recounting the whole progress of the race of man. 

But there is another aspect of adolescence, both 
in its individual and racial meaning. For consider 
what takes place in the life of the youth. All the 
past is striving to be heard in him, and to come into 
harmony in a single life. All racial ideals fight for 
mastery. Each generation of the past demands some- 
thing of him. For a time he lives in the hope of 
fulfilling all this promise. He holds every ideal, 



86 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

and is not yet prepared to sacrifice any of them. 
But soon he loses something of this first hope. More 
and more is found to be unattainable, and at last 
he is content to do but a small part of what his 
ideals and fancies impelled him to attempt. Adult- 
hood is thus, in a very real sense, a fall and a de- 
generation. The adult must sacrifice his ideals for 
himself, but he does not altogether abandon them. 
He must be content to plan and build so that his off- 
spring can carry on his part, and in them he attains 
vicariously the wishes of his youth. 

Thus adolescence points both to the past and the 
future. It reveals the history of the race, its ex- 
periences and ideals, but it also sums up in itself all 
that the race has tried to do, has dreamed, and will 
yet attain. It points to the super-man, and for a 
brief time every adolescent represents the man who 
is to be. It is from this point that the race must 
build its culture. It must grow by means of an ever 
higher adolescence carried to an ever higher degree 
of fulfilment of its promise. At adolescence the in- 
dividual is at his highest point of susceptibility to 
evolutionary influences, as well as to devolutionary 
influences ; and whatever is done to adolescence is 
done to the future of the race. Whatever delays 
it and brings it at last to a fuller maturity is helping 
to bring the race to a greater perfection ; whatever 
enables adolescence to contribute more of its best 
work to the world is adding to the highest culture. 
It is the adolescent who must create the new ideals. 
And he must work quickly while the enthusiasm of 



DEVELOPMENTAL STAGES 87 

his plastic age is upon him, and before the spirit of 
old age, which is content to hold what is gained, has 
supervened. 

References. — 196, 198, 276, 287. 



PART II 

GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION 



CHAPTER VIII 

GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION 

In the light of our review of the principles of 
mental and physical development education can now 
be defined as conscious evolution. Its chief end is 
to carry on the race toward perfection, by bringing 
the youth of each succeeding generation to a higher 
degree of development than the one which has pre- 
ceded. All institutions are to be judged according 
as they fulfil this one supreme purpose. All the great 
problems of the day must be regarded as in the last 
analysis educational problems, for their right solu- 
tions must be first of all such as will secure the 
advancement of the coming generation toward per- 
fection of its virtues. The future of the nation de- 
pends, absolutely, upon the education of the young, 
and therefore education is the greatest of all political 
problems. 

The chief danger of our times is over-individuation, 
the failure of youth to make the change at adoles- 
cence by which, reaching the completest maturity, it 
becomes physically and mentally devoted to the serv- 
ice of the race; and that therefore the present gen- 
eration will draw upon the capital that should be 

91 



92 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

preserved for the next. To a certain point we do 
most for the young by developing our own powers, 
but there is a point beyond which self-indulgence 
robs the future. Faith in the future of the race and 
love for youth are thus the moving forces in all 
right education. It is the function of all to partici- 
pate in the welfare of the young, each in his own 
way. Thus teaching, in some sense, is a universal 
occupation. It is involved in all other practical aims 
of life, and should be in the minds of all whatever 
their work may be. Statesmanship, religion, science, 
are valuable, according as they contribute to the prog- 
ress and ever higher development of man. The great- 
est of all reforms are educational reforms, and no 
others are complete until they affect education. 
Therefore progress in education is the best test of 
progress of civilisation. And the philosophy of edu- 
cation is the most fundamental philosophy. Its prob- 
lem is nothing less than to understand life in such 
a way as to be able to construct an ideal environ- 
ment for the development of the man who is to be, 
an environment which shall bring to the fullest unfold- 
ing every power and part of mind and body ; that 
shall be intellectual training, physical culture, and 
still more education of the feelings and the will. All 
the culture material of the race must be adjusted 
wisely to the needs of the growing child. No edu- 
cational system, no school nor college is an end in 
itself, merely to serve our own 'generation, but all 
must be judged as factors in evolution. When we 
recall also that the school is the most universal of all 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION 93 

social institutions, the depth and breadth of its prob- 
lem becomes clear. 

All who work in philosophic and scientific fields 
should be moved by this pragmatic ideal of knowl- 
edge, if they are to hold the right conception of their 
task. Too often the ideal of knowledge for its own 
sake is held up. This is narrow and selfish, and 
antagonistic to evolution, for it places the interests 
of the individual before those of the race. The largest 
possible aspect of all the truths of life and mind is 
practical — educational. The final test of the validity 
of all truths is their ability to satisfy certain deep 
needs. No system of thought is ever completely tested 
until it has been applied to the education of the young. 
It is a growing appreciation of this ideal on the part 
of educators, which is working a change from interest 
centred in the school as an institution to interest 
grounded in a love of childhood, and a willingness to 
fit the school to the child, rather than the child to the 
school. 

One of the cardinal principles of a philosophy of 
education is that its ideals must centre upon an in- 
terest in adolescence. Education began in a deep re- 
gard for youth and its mysterious transformation. 
Its first public institution was the initiation of youth 
at puberty, and it has spread upward and downward 
— downward to the kindergarten and the scientific 
care and training of infants, and upward to the uni- 
versity. But always the chief interest has been in 
the youth approaching maturity. It is this age that 
the Greek education emphasised, and as a result the 



94 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

Greeks attained the highest culture any race has ever 
had. Youth sets the standards for our ideal of what 
man is to be. And to produce the qualities in abun- 
dance, to preserve them on into age, is the great prac- 
tical task of education. 

Education, in its widest sense, includes, therefore, 
all conscious evolution. It comprises both the meth- 
ods of teaching and also the principles of inner 
growth, and the means of modifying it. It must con- 
sider everything that affects the individual. Re- 
garded scientifically, it is the science which deals with 
environment in its relation to the growing child. 
Considered practically, it is the control of environ- 
ment in the interest of normal development. Its pur- 
pose is humanistic and evolutionary. The art of 
teaching, in the narrower sense, that is, the art of 
imparting knowledge, is but a small part of educa- 
tion; it includes many other influences than those of 
the school. 

A comprehensive pedagogy, or science of education, 
must go to many sources for its facts. It must be 
based first of all upon the history of all educational 
influences of the race. This history must include the 
story of all that has been done for the youth, in all 
grades and schools, in all lands and in all stages of 
civilisation. It must include, too, the description of 
the teaching instinct among animals, and of domes- 
tication of animals by primitive peoples, as well as of 
the influence of civilised nations upon savage peoples. 

Next, a science of education must draw upon facts 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION 95 

from all the experimental and other studies of mental 
and physical abilities and of growth; it must include 
all hygienic principles pertaining to youth, and many 
principles of psychology and medicine. 

Pedagogy must take into account, next, the whole 
subject of the culture material of the race. Each 
subject that can be made a part of the curriculum must 
be studied by itself with reference to its develop- 
ment, and to every phase of its culture value. This 
must include the study of everything the race has 
formulated from its experiences that is worthy to 
be passed on to future generations: literature, myths, 
music, games, art — everything that has culture value. 

Next, pedagogy must be based upon the ideals and 
principles that may be derived from a study of racial 
and individual genesis, and this is the most funda- 
mental part of the subject. For the study of genesis 
not only provides the true ideals of education, and 
reveals the standards in reference to which all educa- 
tional values must be judged, but at the same time 
it suggests principles of educational practice; tells 
us how that which appears as an ideal may be ac- 
complished. It is the best means of judging past 
values in education; it is a means of correcting or 
confirming judgments of educational values based 
upon feelings, preferences, and common sense. In 
this most fundamental of all points of view for study- 
ing education, is the promise of a system in the 
future which shall be both scientific and professional 
in spirit. 



96 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

Such a conception of a science of education must 
make it evident at the outset that no present philosoph- 
ical system is adequate to be a basis of it. More 
than any other subject education must take all points 
of view. It must comprise the good of all systems 
of thought. It must be idealistic, rationalistic, in- 
tuitionistic. It must contain all philosophies if it is 
to continue to grow to meet the needs of successive 
moments in the process of evolution. It must wel- 
come anything that will serve its purposes, and will 
bring it nearer the ultimate truth. The magnitude of 
the problem has not yet been grasped, because the 
complexity of the growing mind and its needs are not 
yet fully understood. 

It is this thought that is at the bottom of the new 
education. It means a turn of interest from the 
school to the child. It puts the child into the centre 
and demands that all ideals and methods of educa- 
tion must be judged finally by a knowledge of the 
facts of child nature, and an interpretation of these 
facts in terms of the experience and ideals of the 
race. All reforms in education have in the past come 
from recognition of these truths, and have been in- 
spired by a true knowledge of the child. The 
fault has been that knowledge of the child has been 
assumed to follow from acquaintance with the adult 
mind. This is not true. The child is not the same 
as an adult. The psychology of the growing, play- 
ing, learning child is the centre of the new philosophy 
of education. He will do most for education who 
will point out the way to a better understanding of the 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION 97 

child, and he will stand most in the way of new 
ideals who becomes complacent and routine in his 
philosophy, and whose attention is fixed upon the 
mechanism and system of the school rather than upon 
the needs of the child. 

The study of the child, then, or human genetic 
psychology, is the very centre of the science and prac- 
tice of education. This cannot be too strongly em- 
phasised, nor too often repeated. Nearly all who 
have spoken with authority about education have 
done so from an intimate knowledge of childhood, 
and this must continue to be true. It is from the 
study of all stages of childhood from infancy to 
adult life that the new light is already appearing in 
educational philosophy. In the study of the mind of 
the child both philosophy and education are going 
back to their natural beginnings. This new knowl- 
edge is having the effect, too, of convicting some of 
our most revered knowledge and methods of the past 
of great errors. It is causing a turning away from 
the transcendental philosophy upon which many have 
been accustomed to lean for their practical principles, 
to a view in which the elemental instincts and com- 
mon sense are respectfully heard. Such a new phi- 
losophy of education precisely meets the needs of our 
times in many respects, and it is likely to lay the 
foundation, not only of an educational theory, but 
of a new philosophy. It is a philosophy of solvable 
questions, in which common people can participate 
and the answers to which can be applied to the prac- 
tical affairs of men. It is bringing new hope into 



98 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

a field that was in danger of lapsing into a narrow- 
philosophy. This new educational science has al- 
ready passed judgments upon many of the most im- 
portant questions of both matter and methods of 
teaching in all grades — verdicts, which, when still 
further confirmed by genetic evidence, will be final, 
and will give education what it has so long lacked, a 
truly scientific basis. It will establish teaching as a 
profession, and make it the most important of all 
callings. Such philosophy is one in which all can 
partake. It may be applied to all grades of school, 
from the kindergarten to the college. It gives us 
true ideals for the home, for it makes love of child- 
hood the centre of all its teachings. Already, both 
in its practical and its scientific aspects, it is being 
felt in religion, in medicine, in the treatment of juve- 
nile crime — in fact everywhere where the nature of 
the human individual comes into question. 

Another lesson from the history of education is 
that all new work — all ideals, progress, and reform — 
comes from without the system, from science, from 
the university at the top of the system. Educational 
institutions of themselves tend to become narrow, 
mechanical, and routine. Ideas and ideals are en- 
gulfed in the magnitude of the system and are sup- 
pressed. Schools are prone to become mere conserva- 
tors and disseminators of knowledge, and their 
methods to remain stagnant. 

Stimulus from without the system has never before 
been felt so profoundly as has the new genetic science. 
The greatest merit of this new view is that it has 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION 99 

opened problems, and unsettled many conclusions that 
were contentedly accepted as fixed. Its greatest op- 
ponents, as one might expect, have been those who, 
like the Herbartians, have wished to live by a definite 
philosophy, that could be formulated with precision, 
and be applied to educational methods ; and that could 
be taught, in rules and formulas, to all teachers. Un- 
like these philosophies, child study insists upon keep- 
ing many questions open and free from formulation 
into fixed conclusions for practice, and insists that, 
although education must eventually be based upon a 
science of human nature, the longer the delay before 
practical conclusions are rigidly applied, the better 
it will be for the child, and the broader and deeper 
will be the foundation of the science of education. 
Almost all problems of education need further study 
by genetic methods. These are the kinds of research 
that must be the foundation of all educational prac- 
tice in the future. Along these lines teachers must 
be instructed. They must learn to study children for 
themselves. To deal practically with anything in any 
other than a formal and routine way, one must under- 
stand its nature. This has not been sufficiently im- 
pressed upon teachers, in regard to the nature of 
the child. The ideal that has been held before them, 
and which they have too readily accepted, is that of 
perfecting the art of imparting knowledge, rather 
than of nourishing or unfolding the child. Attention 
has been too strongly fixed upon subject matter, and 
too little upon the child. Teachers are likely to think 
they have all the knowledge of childhood they need 



ioo GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

from a memory of their own, failing to see how 
imperfect memory is, how narrow the experience 
and partial the character of any one individual. Nor 
does the course in psychology usually taken by teach- 
ers supply the need. For the psychology learned is 
too abstract, and is too much devoted to definition 
and controversy and the minute analysis of the adult 
mind. In this way it may unfit rather than fit for 
the work of teaching. The teacher must study the 
living child, in all his aspects, and must learn how to go 
to the child for knowledge. The point of view must 
be far different from that which has prevailed — that 
of uniformity. This older view provides too little for 
the individual. Equal opportunity is its ideal. The 
elective system, which has now spread from the higher 
to the lower department of the school, indicates what 
the new view-point is to be. 

The new knowledge of the nature of childhood and 
youth that the genetic psychology has brought to view 
shows clearly the educational problem that is before 
us, and at the same time reveals the chief end and 
aim and underlying principles of all education. The 
transmission of knowledge is but a small part of 
the work. Its great purpose is biological; it is to 
develop the child normally, to the greatest maturity 
and sanity. This needs to be said over and over 
again, for it is the central thought of the new educa- 
tion which is founded upon biology. If our race ever 
begins to degenerate it will not be from lack of knowl- 
edge handed on from one generation to another, but 
from the failure of education to understand its whole 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION 101 

problem ; to see that the great work is to bring the 
child up through the stages of growth, and to carry 
each generation a little further than the preceding. 
If education fails to be a factor in evolution, and 
does not perform this developmental function, all the 
arts of instruction of the young cannot prevent de- 
terioration. Our work is not so much to teach knowl- 
edge as to assist the race in acquiring instincts, by 
which all its highest ideals may be carried out in the 
most complete manner. Such a perfecting of in- 
stincts can be accomplished in but one way, by bring- 
ing out inheritance in the child to its fullest power, 
by inculcating new impulses and ideals, and by stim- 
ulating moral interests at precisely the times when 
they may sink deepest and may most influence con- 
duct. By creating instinct which regulates the con- 
duct of the individual in the interest of the species, 
we are educating in the truest sense. That learning 
and morality which comes merely as an acquisition 
of the individual, as a self-conscious adjustment, and 
which can be imparted through fact-learning and by 
all the imperfect arts of teaching now so prevalent, 
is but a make-shift and a substitute for true learn- 
ing, which is the real aim of education. 

There are three ideals which have prevailed, or do 
now prevail, in educational philosophy. According to 
the first, education is at its highest an inculcation of 
the best traditions of the past. It reveres Greece and 
Rome, and the purpose of education, according to this 
ideal, is to bring the child into contact with this an- 
cient life, and enable him to absorb its lessons in 



102 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

such a way as to refine his nature, to set him apart 
from the common herd as a cultured man. This ideal 
has been most consistently represented by that most 
conservative of all educational institutions, the de- 
nominational college. 

The second ideal is represented by the tendency of 
society to make its schools in its own image, and to 
measure their efficiency by their success in fitting the 
child for the domestic, political and industrial life of 
the present time. This ideal of fitting for present 
life, for service in existing institutions, though im- 
measurably better than that of fitting in accordance 
with a by-gone past, also brings with it a danger of 
narrowness and provincialism. It tends to select only 
such knowledge as the adult mind finds useful for its 
own purposes, and to neglect the knowledge most 
suited to the child. It leads to utilitarianism, and 
is illiberal. Those who thus conceive education place 
the school organisation first, and subordinate the indi- 
vidual to it. Citizenship looms large in comparison 
with womanhood and manhood. Its greatest fault is 
that, with a definite ideal of efficiency in life work 
constantly held before the youth, it fits too narrowly 
for practical tasks. It leads to too early and too nar- 
row specialisation of interests, to an over-individual- 
ised and selfish life, in which the larger conceptions 
of manhood are lost. 

But there is a third ideal which teaches that the 
school shall not be made in the image of the past 
nor of the present, but shall fit man for the next stage 
of his development. In the present stage of rapid 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION 103 

transition and expansion of our race this ideal of the 
future must be more dominant than ever before, or 
we shall deteriorate as a nation and fall behind in the 
race. Our children must be trained not merely to 
maintain present civilisation, but to advance upon it. 
We must never forget that the present is not a finality. 
And, knowing the spirit of the age, we must quite as 
often oppose it as serve it. Education must always 
see that no good of the past be lost, but on the other 
hand it must infuse into youth a deep discontent with 
things as they are, and it must give ideals leading to 
the next step in human evolution. That is, education 
must always fit youth to live in the future, not in the 
present nor in the past. 

The grammar school may well have as its purpose to 
teach with reference to the present conditions, and 
may aim to impart the great mass of useful knowledge 
which represents this ideal, but the high school and 
the college must turn toward the future. In them 
personality must be unfolded to its uttermost, with 
the assurance that state, industry, family, church, will 
be transformed and made to fit it and not the reverse. 
The adult cannot understand adolescence fully, and 
is too likely to limit its ideal and to turn it toward the 
present or the past. The wise teacher will more often 
follow than lead. He must let youth develop fully 
before the life of practical service begins, in order 
to make that practical life more effective and com- 
plete. Even under the most favourable conditions 
the individuality which now culminates will all too 
soon be cut short by adult interests, so that the best 



104 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

that education can do is to prolong this stage of transi- 
tion as long as possible, until the broadest possible 
maturity is reached; until the most complete message 
the past has to offer is delivered, and thus the truest 
ideals for the future may be established. 

Education, thus understood, is through and through 
moral in its intention. Its work is to fit the child 
for life, for a moral life in a social community, and 
yet a life in which fitness for the present is not the 
only ideal. Education is essentially a setting of ideals, 
and it can truly be said that there is nothing so prac- 
tical as moral ideals. The school must represent the 
community, but in its relation to past, present, and 
future. It must aid the child to use to the fullest 
extent the hereditary forces which well up within him. 
It must give him the best of current culture, must fit 
him to live with a practical conception of present 
needs, and yet it must set his face strongly toward the 
future. It must inculcate a desire to live for the fu- 
ture, in the service of humanity. The school must, 
therefore, keep in touch with life at every point. It 
must not only represent or mirror life; it must pre- 
pare for it, and create it. 

We can advance one step toward a conception of 
education by defining what fitness for life actually 
means. Fitting for life means preparation for a 
whole, complete life, for practical everyday service ; 
yet in such a way that the individual develops nor- 
mally and fully. The basis of a practical education 
is, therefore, fitting for occupation, and finally for 
specialised interests and labour. However circuitous 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION 105 

the process may be by which the higher specialisation 
is reached, this must be the ideal and goal. This idea 
is elemental. The greatest problem of education is 
to secure this result, to adjust the ideals of service and 
self-interests, to reconcile culture and practical life, to 
bring into harmony the teaching of fact and the ideals 
of mental training. Only in a biological conception 
of growth of the individual, that is, of development 
in relation to the evolution of the race, can we find 
guiding principles in these problems, or obtain any 
clue to the true order of education. 

The main principle of this biological view of edu- 
cation, and the manner in which it reconciles the prac- 
tical and the disciplinary or cultural aspects of train- 
ing, is simple enough so that one who runs may read. 
The child recapitulates in his growth the racial ex- 
periences, and arrives at last at the stage of develop- 
ment of his own social environment. This process 
does not, however, lead by definite practical steps, 
in a man-made and logical sense, to an equally prac- 
tical end. It is circuitous, and it often seems for the 
time to be leading directly away from the specialised 
activity in which it must end. But it is practical in 
the sense that if the individual be allowed to follow 
under favourable conditions his natural course of de- 
velopment, or if his education be directed in such a 
way as to assist and not interfere with these natural 
steps, he will arrive at the end of his circuitous jour- 
ney at a point at which he will represent the best 
experiences of the past, be best fitted to adapt himself 
to present institutions, and will have besides a mo- 



106 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

mentum of growth and interest to go beyond the 
ideals of his day, and to lead a life of the highest 
efficiency in the service of the future. The work of 
education is, precisely, to direct this development in 
such a way that special abilities and interests may 
develop at the right time out of general interests, and 
to prolong whenever possible the periods of prepara- 
tion. This biological conception of education there- 
fore unifies the two ideals — the practical, which de- 
mands that the child be taught in school that which 
will be directly useful to him ; and the cultural, which 
demands that the mind of the child be trained in a 
general way, represented in its extreme form by the 
Latin and Greek ideal. The ideal, in the biological 
conception of education, becomes the practical, and 
the practical is seen to be the ideal. The child learns, 
and becomes adapted to, practical life by passing 
through all the stages through which the practical ac- 
tivities of the race have passed, and this is, at the same 
time, the highest type of culture which he can absorb. 
He must practise for a time that which shall be but a 
temporary interest in order to proceed, by nature's 
way, to the next higher step. He must be at each 
step the best possible representative of his race at 
that stage, cultivating broad interests and many abili- 
ties in order that later they may be brought to the 
best practical application. Merely to teach what is 
practical without reference to the needs of the stage 
of growth ; to impart knowledge precisely in the form 
in which it is to be applied in adult life, is the greatest 
violation of this principle. Training the mind upon 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION 107 

the adult's interests and culture material, without 
reference to the time or manner in which it is taught, 
is the great pedagogical sin. 

This view of education, which must recur again 
and again in every problem of the curriculum, may 
be illustrated by an analogy from physical growth. In 
the earlier periods in the development of all mammals, 
the embryo passes through stages that do not in the 
least indicate what the adult form will be and which 
from practical considerations would seem wrong and 
superfluous. And yet these stages are of the utmost 
importance, for many of the most essential higher 
structures could not be produced without them. Pre- 
cisely this principle holds, to use a single illustra- 
tion, in the growth of the tad-pole's tail, which is in 
itself of no conceivable use to the adult frog, but con- 
tains the means of development of his legs. This bio- 
logical principle is more than analogous to the principle 
of human mental growth. It is the same principle. 
The practical is the natural and the normal. However 
much the process may be obscured in the later stages 
on account of their complexity, the child is just as 
certainly passing through nature-made stages to the 
end of his growth, and he is becoming practical often- 
times by apparently unpractical means. Education 
must take the indirect and unpractical way of nature 
of arriving at the practical end. It may not merely 
teach the child the facts it wishes him to use or apply, 
for the simple reason that knowledge is not power. 
Interest must be created, and power and momentum 
generated, by following nature's steps, for they can be 



108 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

gained in no other way. The whole history of animal 
life enforces this view. It is a fundamental biological 
law. Education must take the biological rather than 
the logical road to its end. Applied in detail, of course 
this principle meets with many difficulties and obstacles. 
The child is complex, his stages of growth are ob- 
scured, and are often foreshortened in ways which are 
but little understood as yet, for we have not thus 
far a criterion of normal development based suffi- 
ciently on facts, nor have we a satisfactory theoretical 
formulation of the principle of recapitulation. Yet it 
must stand as the first principle of education and must 
be kept in view in considering every great problem 
of the school. We must understand that the child's 
life must be kept sacred to heredity, that the past can 
teach him far more than his teacher will be able to 
impart to him ; that nature will direct his growth and 
point out the steps, and that only by taking advantage 
of the momentum of this past, and building upon the 
structures which nature establishes can education be 
made to assist nature. Otherwise nature and educa- 
tion will be in conflict in ways that can not fail to 
do harm to the child. The problem of education is 
to discover the stages and manner of transformations 
in the child, and learn how to facilitate growth, com- 
plete the co-ordination of these stages into a unity, 
supply the right culture or nutritive material, suited to 
each stage. Only thus can we expect to find educa- 
tional standards, to protect against the many influ- 
ences in society — in home, school, church, civilisation 
generally — which tend to break up the natural process 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION 109 

of growth of the child, make him precocious, drive 
him too early to specialised and practical life, and 
teach him what he is not ready to learn. 

Though individuals differ greatly, not only in regard 
to the age of appearance of racial steps, but in their 
combination and sequences, a knowledge of nascent 
stages and interests, studied in masses of individuals, 
by methods of average and the like, will be for the 
present the best safeguard against many of the evils 
of the present educational system, and will furnish 
the best standards for curriculum and method-making. 
The first problem is to learn how to recognise the 
stages in which nature is at work, and we must then 
allow these stages free play, suiting instruction and 
culture to them with full confidence that the insight 
of nature and of the race is better than the wisdom 
of the individual, and that if nature be wrong, it will 
certainly be impossible to devise a method that shall 
contain less dangers of errors. Two periods of life, 
infancy and adolescence, show so clearly the working 
of nature directing all their transformations that here 
at least we may be reasonably sure of the proper 
method of education. We must in both these stages 
be careful not to try to accelerate nature and we must 
be equally sure that there are no retarding influences. 
Good nutrition is the only accelerating factor which 
may normally hasten stages of growth. All external 
forcing is antagonistic to nature. Interest welling up 
from within shows the way; the hands that guide 
must have a light touch. 

If this biological principle be the true foundation 



no GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

of the theory of education, one must see that the play 
of the child most truly reveals his true nature, and 
most clearly indicates the lines upon which educational 
practice must be planned. Play is the most uni- 
versal activity in the world. It is nature's product, 
and in it the child shows clearly the stages through 
which he passes. Play is to the highest degree prac- 
tical, for, although it has no immediate end whatever 
in view, it accomplishes the highest purpose of bring- 
ing out in the child his hereditary forces, of helping 
him through the racial steps, of bringing him to the 
most complete maturity and efficiency. Play repre- 
sents both the past and the future. In play the child 
exercises what is racially old, but play also points to 
the future, for it is the basis of the power of all that 
is to come, and in that sense, it is in the highest degree 
practical. Many of the child's activities reach useful 
ends in no other way, for they live but a short time, 
and then give place to new interests. Yet they perform 
a part by taking their necessary place in the natural 
order of progress of the child toward higher stages. 
The child is most natural and whole when he is at 
play, and it is the playing child that the educator 
must study more than any other subject in order to 
learn his methods. Many play interests may be trans- 
ferred bodily to the practice of education, for the 
child is capable of developing every ability and func- 
tion in his play. Whenever, in the school, the nat- 
ural play interest may be brought in, there is work 
being accomplished; for then the child is in his own 
element, and his mind is active through inner motives. 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION in 

Free activity of mind and body, doing what the child 
tends to do, when he is left to act himself out freely, 
must be the spirit of education. Of course as re- 
gards, details of application of this principle, we are 
but at the beginning of the problem. We do not yet 
know what stages of growth are in the process of 
becoming shortened, what should be prolonged and 
intensified, nor to what extent nature may be helped 
by precisely the right assistance at the right time. We 
do not know what of the past experience of the race 
is least of service in the present. We do not know 
how nature is trying to choose and thread her way 
up through the hereditary stages, so do not know 
how to choose just those forms of culture materials 
most suited to each step. We do not yet know how 
to direct the play activities in such a way as to facili- 
tate to the greatest extent the working off of unde- 
sirable traits in development, which is one of the most 
important functions of the play life. 

Play, we must understand, is vastly more than a 
motor function. Both body and mind pass through 
their play stages, and for every developing faculty 
there is a period of unpractical and free activity, 
which we can call nothing else than play. In all these 
transformations the general pattern of the process is 
the child's own, the spirit in which everything is done 
is the outgrowth of force working within, and is not 
imparted from without. The adult may choose the 
material upon which the child's play interest shall ex- 
pend itself, but he cannot create this force, and he 
must not try to direct it into channels unnatural to it. 



112 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

There must, therefore, be no fundamental distinc- 
tion between play and work, nor between play and 
study. Education must begin in play, and the play 
spirit must pervade all work. It is the most economic 
mode of activity and therefore it must be made use 
of whenever it is possible. It must be carried on 
through all the periods of education, and adult life 
must be suffused with its spirit. To the extent that 
this can be done, the chasm between self-sacrifice and 
self-expression will be closed. Play is the best or- 
ganiser of activities, and it is by moulding the play 
forces in childhood and youth that life may be organ- 
ised into a connected whole, with interests properly 
proportioned to the needs of the individual. Work, 
without interest, action with defective psychic impul- 
sion, is the tragedy of the world. It brings fatigue, 
and fatigue is the greatest of all deterrents of normal 
progress, whether in race or individual. It arrests 
growth and action, and makes for permanent arrest in 
low stages of function and structure. 

The opposite extreme of such a mode of educating 
the child is that which tries to impart to him the rudi- 
ments of an artificial culture apportioned according 
to the standards and ideals of an adult mind. For 
its motive forces, to create interest, it depends upon 
fear, prizes, examinations, upon various forms of ar- 
tificial rewards and penalties, near and remote. Its 
method is acquisition and not use nor growth. Such 
a method plays havoc with all the nascent stages of 
growth. It sets up a logical, rather than a genetic 
or natural, ideal. It over-emphasises form, and neg- 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION 113 

lects content. It tries to develop by mere mental train- 
ing. It has no true place for natural interest, and it 
forgets that knowledge is not an end in itself, and 
that study is not merely for training the faculties. 
It selects studies in which there is a minimum of 
pleasure in the pursuit, with the hope of a maximum 
of good from the effort to acquire knowledge. Meth- 
ods of drill and exactness are placed before methods 
of stimulation and suggestion. Such an ideal is wrong, 
and it cannot possibly lead to the fullest maturity. 
In it the order of nature is entirely lost, and even in- 
verted. Subjects are taught, not with reference to 
what they will do for the child, nor with regard 
to what the child will do with them, but according to 
an artificial and superficial conception of practical use 
or training for present use as a step in the educa- 
tional process, and leading to examination for the next 
grade ahead. Everything is taught in the logical order 
in which it is contained in the text-book, and in the 
teacher's mind. The teacher's mind should be charged 
with his subject to overflowing, if he is to have the 
best effect upon the mind of his pupil. But instead 
of that, too often the teacher knows but little more 
than is contained in the texts he teaches, and he takes 
one subject or another, as need demands, with but little 
special preparation. In this way the manner of teach- 
ing is put before the content taught, and the disciplin- 
ary value of the subject, its usefulness as a means of 
bringing out desired qualities of effort or attention of 
the pupil, is put above the nutritive value or timeliness 
of the subject matter. There is too much of rule and 



114 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

precision, and definite learning of formulas. All such 
methods, which conceal from the pupil the vast world 
of knowledge, and give him a few facts and principles, 
tend to make for a conceit of knowledge that destroys 
natural curiosity. Mass teaching still further depletes 
the nourishing effects of the teaching. There is method 
and uniformity. The same matter is taught year 
after year by the teacher, and his store of knowledge 
becomes antiquated and not suited to the present needs 
of the child. All such objections fall under the one 
general criticism that the school method that is based 
upon the adult's conception of knowledge and its uses 
violates the nature of the child's mind. The school 
takes the child away from the natural conditions of 
the home and society in which he can live out his na- 
tive impulses, and puts him under restraint, too often 
with a teacher who is more disciplinarian than truly 
teacher. Such treatment at its worst makes an early 
maturity, but one lacking in depth. It takes away 
natural childhood and makes the youth old in thoughts 
before his time. All such ideals violate the play spirit 
of childhood. We must not forget that the school, at 
its best, is but an artifice on the part of man to cope 
with conditions that a somewhat abnormal state of 
life in civilisation has brought about. And we must 
not forget the true significance of the school, as indi- 
cated by its very name, which means leisure. The 
school rightly stands for a prolongation of human 
infancy. It is sacred to growth, health, and heredity, 
and to the play-spirit. The first effort must be to keep 
out of nature's way. Every invasion of the child's 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION 115 

natural leisure has a presumption against it, and must 
justify itself. We are too likely to worship the alphabet 
and the multiplication table, and to forget that even 
reading and writing are but recent acquirements of 
the race, and that millions of years of man's history 
have been lived without them ; that, finally, there are 
many children who ought never to be educated in the 
routine of the school. 

There are other forms of education, yet the school 
is likely to think itself the only educative factor in 
the child's life. In a sense it still does but poorly 
what a more primitive agricultural life did for the 
child; the life in which labour was more undifferen- 
tiated and in which the child took a part in the home 
and in the activities of society and received most of 
his education by activity and contact with his elders. 
Such a life still lingers in the country, and represents 
an educational system from which the modern school 
has still much to learn. The farm was a great nat- 
ural laboratory. It trained a child to usefulness, with- 
out destroying his play spirit, nor making his life 
artificial. It was rich in moral elements, and opened 
all the interests in nature to safeguard youth during 
the times of greatest danger to health and morals. 
Biological education demands, as its first principle, that 
we stand out of the way of nature and allow it to 
have its own way with the child. It declares that the 
great need of the whole period of development of the 
child is to live out each stage, lingering in that stage 
as though it were to be the last. It asks that the child's 
growth be, for the most part, retarded rather than 



n6 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

hastened, in order to give all the nascent stages time 
to fully ripen. To linger at leisure in each recapitula- 
tory stage, so that each individual may experience all 
the life the race has experienced, is the ideal. This 
is also the most practical education, for the individual 
thus completed is the most mature, the most efficient 
and therefore the most economical for any society to 
produce in the greatest abundance possible. Much of 
the art of education consists in knowing how to make 
use of each recapitulatory stage, to make it yield most, 
and to serve as the best possible preparation for the 
next stage. The child must be educated in these lower 
stages with a full knowledge of their value and im- 
portance, and the culture material upon which his mind 
is nourished must be similar to that which the race 
itself, in these lower stages, used to fit itself to be the 
progenitor of superior types of human life. One of 
the chief functions of education, too, is to prevent the 
lower forms of interest and enthusiasm from becom- 
ing established, and to utilise every force in the lower 
to build the higher. In a word, to repeat what cannot 
be too strongly impressed, the biological principle de- 
mands that the child be allowed to live in and enjoy to 
the full each stage, while we provide for him whatever 
makes it more full, joyous, and free, at the same time 
moulding his energy and directing it toward the best 
ends. In this way the child is educating himself in 
ways of which he knows nothing. He is practising, in 
a harmless way, the great sins of the race, and fortify- 
ing himself against their later influence. He is drain- 
ing off rudimentary impulses, and unfolding from the 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION 117 

energy, thus set free, powers that he will later use in 
practical life. The teacher's art must now be to vivify 
all the resources of literature, tradition, and history, 
and supply the fullest culture he can command. The 
child must mature slowly, in every part and function, 
and this he cannot do unless there be plenty of ma- 
terials upon which the mind may linger. Otherwise 
the starved mind will pass on toward maturity more 
rapidly, but leave a shallow foundation for everything 
that is to follow. The worst form of all of the 
dreaded prococity is early sexual ripening, so likely 
to follow if the social life is too stimulating, and the 
child's natural interests are not properly fed. If the 
child's nature be played upon by mature impulses, if 
he be so trained that he imitate the adult rather than 
live through childhood's natural stages, some form 
of too early maturity is sure to ensue. 

Now, although we lack greatly a science of childhood 
complete enough so that we can detect each nascent 
period, or the precise relation, at any time, of indi- 
vidual to race ; and are as far as can be from a scien- 
tific pedagogy in the sense that we know exactly what 
culture material to apply at each point to each indi- 
vidual, we have one cardinal principle — one reliable 
means of determining the order and, to a certain extent, 
the proper method of teaching. This cardinal prin- 
ciple is that interest is the best test of capacity and of 
pedagogical ripeness. Interest is like bodily hunger, 
an expression of need, and the best expression nature 
or reason affords us of the child's requirements. The 
difference in the effect of activity that proceeds from 



Il8 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

interest developing from within, and activity that is 
forced upon the child against his native desires is 
very great indeed. These artificial interests can easily 
be created by the adult, for the child's capacity for in- 
terest is plastic, but the forced interest has no root, 
what is thus acquired is not assimilated, and it there- 
fore remains in the mind as a foreign body to impede 
growth and to lay the foundation for many an ill. 
Without natural interest there can be no normal de- 
velopment. Therefore the first work of the teacher 
is to discover interests, to put the child into situations 
in which interests will express themselves. 

Each stage of childhood is marked by its own inter- 
ests or nascent periods, in which activities develop from 
within. These are milestones to guide the teacher. 
To teach the young we must meet them on the ground 
of their own interests, for thus they will of themselves 
supply the power, while education directs and guides, 
stimulates, inspires, and nourishes. Adult interests 
and methods of learning must be kept assiduously in 
the background, and everything must be adapted to 
the child. When these nascent periods are better un- 
derstood, we shall have a far deeper insight than now 
into economic methods of teaching. The laws of these 
nascent periods are yet to be determined; we must 
know the age curve of growth and decay of each; 
we must learn precisely how much each function 
should be stimulated and when; how interests must 
best be treated in their stages of most rapid growth 
and of least growth ; how to train each individual with 
reference to his special abilities, whether to stimulate 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION 119 

greatly that which is prominent, and to bring abilities 
to the fullest development of which they are capable, 
or to educate more by training powers and parts that 
are weaker, in order to preserve proportions in the 
development, and to prevent individuality from becom- 
ing excessive. All these are problems that can be 
solved in but one way — that is, by accumulating evi- 
dence from many individuals with reference to every 
natural interest. Complete solution of all these ques- 
tions is an ideal of the future, but in the meantime 
the educator must work with the native interests as 
best he can, and try to understand the periods of the 
child's progress as determined by nature ; and he must 
not violate these by inflicting upon the child methods 
and order of studies arranged merely according to 
adult logic. It is only by following the course of natural 
development that the personality will be completely 
organised. An education that follows along the lines 
of inner development of the child's interests is the 
only one that trains the will properly. Such a cur- 
riculum has a natural, and not an artificial unity, and its 
great advantage is that, however complex the culture 
material, if its sequences follow the natural order, 
mental dissociation does not result, but mental unity. 
Such an education is the simple education, because it 
works upon elemental instincts, because it does nothing 
that the child does not of himself tend to do. It puts 
the individual into normal relations with his fellows, 
inculcates deep beliefs, fixes regular and deep habits 
of thought and action, brings out individuality, and 
lays the foundation for a specialisation which shall be 



120 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

broadly based upon the natural interests and shall 
grow out of them. Such teaching and such culture 
material produce and strengthen elemental virtues and 
emotions. 

It is precisely in the opposite direction that much of 
the present over-culture leads. Too much knowledge 
out of relation to native needs distracts the mind rather 
than educates it. It prevents growth, both physical 
and mental, because natural enthusiasm is not aroused. 
It fatigues, because the will effort that it demands 
is not natural. Combined with the evils of city life, 
with its too many and too diverse attachments and 
interests, and its artificial stimulations of the mind, 
precocity and too early wisdom is fostered, and edu- 
cation fails to reach the most essential parts of the 
nature of the child, but merely informs, and prepares 
for examinations. 

These principles need to be emphasised again and 
again, for they are to be applied to every topic of 
the curriculum, and to every method of instruction. 
The first question to be asked in each case is whether 
the proposed thing suits the nature of the child as a 
race-recapitulating organism. If it does not it is wrong 
and unpedagogic, however dear it may be to the adult's 
heart. The applications of the principle are many, 
but the principle itself is simple and clear. Many 
problems of detail remain to be solved, but the method 
is plain and direct. Always the child must be inter- 
preted in his racial significance, both as an organism 
produced by the race and bearing its fruit, and guided 
by its experience; and also as an organism produced 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION 121 

by the race in its own interests, to serve it by a life 
of specialised activity, to be perfected by such a course 
of training as nature itself has pointed out in its great 
fundamental lines. Knowledge of the mind, as thus 
understood, is necessary in dealing with every problem 
of childhood, from even before the birth of the indi- 
vidual, and on to the last stages of maturing. Edu- 
cation must rest upon a science of development. 

References. — 24, 28, 32, 43, 51, 76, 78, 84, 88, 92, 101, 105, 
109, 116, 133, 143, 147, 155, I59> 162, 168, 170, 172, 188, 194, 196, 
208, 220, 226, 227, 228, 245, 262, 264, 2?g, 282. 



CHAPTER IX 

PHYSICAL AND INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

The biological principle that declares that mind and 
body have evolved together in the race and have de- 
veloped under the same laws in the individual, neces- 
sarily makes ample provision for the training of the 
body, when it is applied to the theory of education. 
Physical and industrial education are in an especial 
way natural, for they are older than all schools. Primi- 
tive life in the open air, in forest and country, con- 
tained many educational resources that have been sac- 
rificed in modern life. This still remains as an ideal. 
The abounding health that comes from a life of free 
activity is the foundation of all enthusiasms and inter- 
ests. To produce such a state of health in the child, 
so to imitate the state of nature that this can be se- 
cured, is the first function of the school. The health 
of the present generation is the only promise we have 
of the welfare of future generations. All institutions 
must be judged first of all from the standpoint of 
health. 

The care of the health, we may say with all the au- 
thority of biology, is the first duty of both home and 
school. Questions of food, exercise, and air are fun- 
damental. There is need of great reform and wide- 

122 



PHYSICAL AND INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 123 

spread public education on many problems of the 
physical life of the child. The feeding of infants 
needs to be put universally upon a more scientific basis, 
and the causes of the great mortality of infants in our 
cities must be better understood and removed. The 
duty of parents toward their children does not end with 
giving them birth and sustenance. They must use 
every means of bringing them to healthy and complete 
maturity. It must be a part of public education to 
teach parents how to do this, for upon it depends, 
more than upon anything else, the future of the race. 

When the child passes from the home to the school 
the problem is still first of all how to promote health. 
Parent, teacher, and physician must co-operate to keep 
the child healthy. Especially in the city, where life 
is hard for the child, must the school do its part. 
Without such interest in the physical welfare of the 
child the school is but a poor servant of the com- 
munity, for it neglects the most precious possession 
of society, the health of its young. 

Within the school the problems of health are many 
and serious. The school building itself should repre- 
sent the perfection of the builder's art. It should be 
situated with reference to the best air and light, and be 
free from all disturbing influences of every kind. The 
playgrounds should be more hygienic than most are 
now; and they should always be open. The soil 
should be prepared with special reference to its use, 
and the playground should not be closely fenced in, 
but open on all sides. Ventilation, heating, lighting, 
arrangement and form of desks, the hygienic aspects 



124 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

of reading and writing, exercise and recesses, all the 
problems of length of periods of study, and their 
order, means of prevention of contagion, cleanliness of 
both child and the school — all these are serious scien- 
tific questions which appear large from the evolution- 
ary point of view and worthy of the closest study and 
attention by everyone responsible for the health of 
the child in the school. 

Outside the school there should be more provision for 
the welfare and health of the children. There should 
be reduced rates upon cars leading to parks and to the 
country. There must be an abundance of public play- 
grounds, of gymnasia and baths, and all vacant places 
in the city should be turned to account in providing 
for the play life of the child. 

Especially the health of the child in early adolescence 
must be the care of both school and home. There is 
need of a great awakening of interest in attention to 
the health at this time. It needs a science and hygiene 
all its own, its problems are so special and so different 
from those of other periods of childhood. Especially 
important at this time is sexual hygiene, for upon the 
proper care of the sexual organs and functions not only 
the health of the individual greatly depends during all 
the remaining years of his life, but the future of the 
race as well. At no other period of life is unhygienic 
living so prevalent, nor so harmful. 

Now the best of all controllable means of preserving 
and increasing the health of child and youth is prop- 
erly regulated muscle culture. Man is by nature a 
motor animal. All his interests have been motor in- 



PHYSICAL AND INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 125 

terests. Nearly half his body is muscle. Life is con- 
duct, and the muscular system is the only means of 
making of worth any thought or feeling that is ever 
experienced. We are coming to understand that ac- 
tivity is the key-note of life ; there is less and less use 
for mere knowing. Education must be at bottom ac- 
tivity, involving muscle and will, if it is to represent 
life and prepare for life. It is better to train a child 
so that by activity he adds ever so little to the values 
in the world, than that he should store up the greatest 
amount of unexpressed knowledge. 

Muscle strength and endurance are needed now more 
than ever before, especially in the great industries of the 
city, yet the city is the very place where it is least likely 
to be acquired and is most In danger of degenerating. 
For these reasons there is need of wide-spread and 
deep understanding of the function of muscle train- 
ing, in relation to health and efficiency both of mind 
and body, and of something like a revival of primitive 
interest in the active life. Especially is this true of 
the years of adolescence, when muscle development 
has its greatest opportunity, and when neglect of the 
muscles is the greatest fault of most of our educa- 
tional methods. At adolescence the muscles begin to 
increase rapidly in size and strength, the heart increases 
in size and power, and in thickness of its walls. Now, 
of all times, good muscle-habits must be established, 
for they are fundamental in the education of the will 
and the emotions. This is the surest entrance to the 
enthusiasms and to skilled activity, and the best of all 
protections against the moral evils of this trying period. 



126 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

Two principles must be clearly appreciated in esti- 
mating the function of a motor education. The first 
is that muscle training is not only for the pufpose of 
increasing health and physical strength, but it is quite 
as much mental and moral discipline. Muscles are the 
organs by which we perfect habits, and by which we 
express ourselves in every way. Therefore motor 
training is quite as much a part of mental education as 
is any other discipline, and it must not be regarded as 
merely physical in effect. 

The second principle is that in the growth of the 
individual both the nervous mechanisms and muscles 
tend to develop in a fixed order, from fundamental to 
accessory. The individual follows the racial steps, and 
first are perfected the larger muscles and their nerve 
connections, those that mediate the racial movements. 
During childhood the great fundamental muscles of 
back, arms, and legs are most used, and they should 
be the parts upon which the greater part of motor 
training is centred. The finer movements have been 
produced as a superposed layer upon the fundamental, 
and they come later in the individual as they do in the 
race, and in an order fixed by nature. The school 
often violates this principle of motor development, and 
especially in the writing and busy work of the first 
grades the opposition to nature is seen. Many seem 
to think that because the child is little he must do little 
things, but quite the opposite is true. The smaller 
the child the coarser, larger, and freer must be his 
movements. The racial movements, the fragments of 



PHYSICAL AND INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 127 

motor interests that well up in the child and flourish 
for a time are signs that hereditary forces are func- 
tioning. These should have free expression in play, 
for they generate plasticity, make the motor experi- 
ence rich and full, and lay a foundation for later, more 
refined, and more skilful movements. 

The period of from eight to twelve or thereabouts 
is a time of development of the finer movements, when 
skill in many directions may be acquired naturally and 
without danger to nervous mechanisms. This is the 
time indeed when skilful movements may most easily 
be learned, and most perfectly established for life. At 
adolescence again comes a period of rapid development 
of fundamental movements. The great muscles now 
have a period of rapid second growth, and this is the 
time when they must be trained and must function in 
enthusiastic activities. This is, in fact, the one time of 
life when muscular power may be acquired and if 
muscles are not now trained there is danger that there 
will be imperfect control or weakness, and wrong motor 
habits which will continue to hamper the individual 
throughout life. 

For present purposes all motor training may be di- 
vided into four general groups. These are (1) Play 
— including all the free activities of all ages of youth. 
(2) Industrial training, including all teaching of occu- 
pations that are practised by adults or have been prac- 
tised by them in the past. (3) Manual training, in- 
cluding all formal systems of hand training such as 
the Sloyd. (4) Gymnastics, all definite body-train- 



128 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

ing, calesthenic exercises, gymnasium and apparatus 
work of all kinds, and the various systems of physical 
culture. 

Play. — Play is related to all practical activities of 
the race, and on the mental side, it is the raw material 
of which all purposive activity is made. In play the 
child repeats, stage by stage, the activities of the race. 
Play is the most natural attitude of the child at all 
times, for in it he is racial; he plays without effort, 
and with enthusiasm and pleasure, because he is car- 
ried along by the powerful impulses of the race, which 
live again in him, and control him. Considered thus, 
it must be seen that play is the fundamental form of 
motor training and exercise suitable for the child at 
all ages, and must be made the basis of all the rest. 
It is the best because it is the most natural, the most 
general, and the most autonomous. In play the re- 
quirements of nature are so clear and unmistakable 
that the child may be left in great measure to educate 
himself. 

Play must be regarded as the greatest of all edu- 
cational forces, the foundation of education. For 
without the interests which play creates the child could 
not be educated in a true sense at all. The methods of 
training the child are more clearly pointed out to the 
educator in play than in any other way. The best 
guide as to what shall be played at any age, if the 
social environment be normal, is the natural interest 
of the child himself. Play interests indicate the ripen- 
ing of functions which need exercise. Play may be 
directed by stimulating in the child those forms of 



PHYSICAL AND INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 129 

expression that have developed in the best social en- 
vironments and among the most normal children, but 
play must not be artificially prescribed to the child. 

A few of the many play motives which are most 
directly connected with the education of the child in 
school can be used to illustrate the proper attitude of 
the teacher and parent toward the play life of the 
child, and to indicate to what extent and how the play 
interest may be directed and utilised. 

No form of motor activity is more nearly univer- 
sal than dancing, nor more deeply affected by phyletic 
motives. In the dance can be expressed, in the 
form of movement, every important act, sentiment, 
and event of man's life. The dance goes back 
to the time when play, art, and work were not sepa- 
rated from one another. It is one of the best expres- 
sions of the pure play impulse of the child, and of his 
motor needs, and it constitutes the most liberal and 
best form of motor education. Our modern ball- 
room dances are of the least value of any, and are least 
rich in cultural elements, both for the body and the 
mind. The dance needs to be rescued from its pres- 
ent degenerate form, and be so enriched that we may 
use in many ways the motives which it arouses and 
expresses. Not only is there possibility in dancing for 
an almost ideal bodily training, for strength, co-ordina- 
tion, and endurance, but it is also one of the best edu- 
cators of the will and the higher sentiments. 

Another old and deep motive is conflict. It is this 
instinct that inspires a great many of the motor activi- 
ties of the child, as well as all such sports as wrestling, 



i 3 o GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

fighting, boxing, and hunting. This strong primitive 
impulse is a power that must be directed and made to 
assist in the child's education. All the movements, in- 
terests, and mental states that it arouses can be brought 
to bear upon the specialised activities of games and 
occupations, in such a way as to add zest and enthusi- 
asm. 

Another racial interest, less active and less general, 
but a powerful stimulant to the most varied activities, 
is the interest in dolls. Doll play is not merely an 
expression of the mother instinct of the girl, as is 
sometimes supposed, but of the social impulse as well, 
and is therefore native in both boy and girl. The doll 
is not so much offspring as companion and associate, 
with whom nearly all the interests and activities of 
daily life are reproduced and recast. In his doll play 
the child not only exercises both fundamental and ac- 
cessory movements, but he practises a remarkable va- 
riety of generic activities which underlie later occupa- 
tion. With a doll the child expresses and practises 
almost everything he knows or can do. Therefore the 
school should, on the principle of economy, use this 
plastic energy which is already active and does not need 
to be created nor aroused. In fact, the doll play of 
the child can be used to teach almost anything the 
school needs to impart in the earlier years, and in 
such a way as to utilise the momentum of a plastic 
phyletic interest. 

Almost the same words may be used in explaining 
the nature and function of the collecting impulse, which 
is related to the deep property instincts of the race, 



PHYSICAL AND INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 131 

and is an universal and profound motive in the child, 
which may be used in many ways. By arousing an 
interest in collecting, almost every intellectual task of 
the child may be enlivened, and even the most purely 
cultural subjects may be made to assume some of the 
qualities of active, motor interests. 

Another example of the manner in which an instinct 
may be made to do work in educating and co-ordinating 
the mind may be seen in the child's native interest in 
playing in the earth or sand. Children left to them- 
selves, or wisely directed, tend in such plays to socialise 
their activities, and to express almost every aspect of 
their environment that strongly appeals to them. In 
such an activity the child's interest becomes construc- 
tive and imaginative, and he learns quite spontaneously 
many lessons of social life and industry. Indeed such 
play possesses, as an educative factor, one conspicuous 
advantage over the school, in that all that is learned is 
expressed, and the learning grows out of an active 
interest. Everything comes naturally from the step 
before it, and so all is co-ordinated. It is all brought 
to a focus, a unity is made out of widely diverse facts 
and actions, and knowledge is brought to bear precisely 
upon the point where the child's interest is centred, 
as he co-operates with the interest of another in free, 
natural play. This is an ideal expression of a motor 
education which is also mental, and a mental training 
which, as all mental training should, expresses itself 
in movement. 

What is true of one phyletic impulse in the child is 
true, in a sense, of all. The child passes through 



132 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

nascent stages of impulse when he is ready for any 
learning that may be attached in a natural manner to 
these interests. The order, form, and general char- 
acter of these interests are determined by nature. The 
materials which the child shall use, and the manner in 
which the interests shall be turned to account rest, in 
part at least, with the parent and teacher. So great 
and far-reaching is the play spirit of the child that 
many now think a well-rounded liberal education could 
be given by means of plays and games alone, believing 
there is no profit where there is no pleasure in the task. 
Hence we now find play-grounds, publicly directed 
play-institutions of one kind and another, play-schools, 
and play-teachers — and all this one of the great fac- 
tors in a movement toward a better co-ordinating of 
the motor and mental interests of the child, and a better 
physical education. Play is one of the magic words 
in the new education. The problems of play are now 
open all along the line in education, and one of the 
greatest of all practical questions is how to make the 
most of play in teaching the child ; not only in the kin- 
dergarten, but on upward in every grade of the school 
system. The problem of the city is how to utilise every 
inch of possible space to give the child's play life room 
to expand. Roof-gardens, playgrounds, recreation 
piers, schoolyards and school buildings must be util- 
ised. There must be plenty of excursions to freer and 
more open spaces, and outings of all kinds that seem 
to favour growth. Juvenile theatricals, boys' clubs, 
nature study, industrial plays, curricula of plays and 
games, sand-piles, apparatus, parks, animals, must all 



PHYSICAL AND INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 133 

be treated as educational agencies, and their value and 
proper application to all ages and conditions of child- 
hood must be precisely worked out. 

At the age of adolescence the play problem comes 
to the front in a new way. Now ensues, in many re- 
spects, a second infancy, and the play of many new 
functions begins. At this time the play spirit must 
be utilised to save the youth from many ills of both 
body and mind, and to carry on his enthusiasms and 
growth to the highest possible plane. There should be 
both public provision for the recreational life, and the 
school and home must recognise the fundamental na- 
ture and power of play. Among many recreational 
measures best suited for this age, swimming may be 
mentioned as excellent both in mental and physical 
effects. There should be in every city abundant facili- 
ties for this most healthful of exercises, for it has 
unique powers over the emotional life. Rhythmic 
games, and games involving passive movements, are 
efficacious. There should be plenty of skating, tennis, 
golf, cricket, fives, croquet, bowling, quoits, curling, 
all of which have power to control the emotions, which 
are in great need of training in all this transitional 
period. Walking, running, dancing, coasting, and per- 
haps most of all hill-climbing are of value in helping 
to control the sexual passions, which at this time are 
so liable to over-excitement or perversion. 

Industrial Education. — The great need and the 
meaning of the industrial idea in education have al- 
ready been sufficiently emphasised. Most of the nat- 
ural activities of children consist in rehearsing the in- 



i 3 4 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

dustries of the race. Whenever we find strong inter- 
ests or impulses they will usually be discovered to be 
impelled by the revival, in the child, of practical inter- 
ests of the race. Modern life draws the child away 
from this free expression of the life of the race, by 
forcing him into a sedentary, learning life, even in the 
earliest school years. Education needs to be brought 
into closer touch with activities upon which adult prac- 
tical life depends. What is oral, and dramatic — the 
pictorial, the motor, the strong racial movements as 
expressed in industry, movements of lifting, digging, 
striking, throwing, running, need to be brought into 
the child's experience in a co-ordinated manner. All 
the multiform activities of the race must be represented 
in the child. The product, the thing to be made or 
done must be the end; and not merely the activity 
as exercise or motor expression. It has always been 
the product that has inspired the race, so it must be 
for the child. He must make those things which he 
himself needs in his business of play and self-expres- 
sion, and his doing and making must be co-ordinated in 
every way with his learning. He must pass through 
the experiences of food-getting, fishing, hunting, do- 
mestication of animals, and agriculture. He must 
know something of the arts of preparing clothing; of 
the treatment of hides and furs ; of weaving blankets, 
and making covering for feet and head; of ornament 
and decoration ; of the making of utensils, weapons, 
idols, and pottery. He must feel in his own life the 
struggles of the race in providing shelter for the young 
— how they progressed from caves, tents, and huts to 



PHYSICAL AND INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 135 

their present forms of dwellings. He must catch 
enough of the spirit of the primitive industries and 
arts to imbibe their educative values. Especially does 
education need to take the child back to the occupa- 
tions connected with the tilling of the soil. This is 
the great foundation of all the rest. Life is based 
upon it, and especially in our Aryan peoples has the 
agricultural idea played a great part in the education 
of body and mind. All this is still very inadequately 
represented in our schools. We have been so afraid 
of teaching the child trades that even the most general 
aspects of occupations have been neglected, though 
the interests of the child demand just such a culture. 

Two types of modern adult activity furnish excel- 
lent ideals for an education that shall be true to nature 
in the ways just demanded — the colonial ideal, and 
the ideal of the general farm. Many suggestions 
could be found in the country life of two generations 
ago for the industrial work of the school, especially 
in the earlier grades. For a certain stage of boy life 
it is the best environment ever realised in history. It 
combines physical training, industrial training, and 
technical elements in good proportions with the civic 
and religious. Children take the deepest interest in 
the activities of country life, and the multitudinous 
and diversified industries of the old-time farmer are 
unexcelled for stimulating the child's mind, and for 
the production of sound health. The reproduction, in 
the modern school system, so far as possible, of the 
elements of this stage of industry would be the ideal 
industrial education, far better than anything that has 



136 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

yet been produced. To the extent that the school must 
fail in this respect it falls upon parents to understand 
the great natural love of the child for country life, 
and to try to provide every possible opportunity for 
vacations and excursions into the country. 

A second ideal, the colonial, is peculiarly suited to 
youth in the early years of adolescence. It is the ideal 
of our forefathers in their first century in America. 
It is dominated by the spirit of self-reliance and prog- 
ress, a willingness and eagerness to push out into un- 
tried fields, and a sense of power and plasticity to 
meet all kinds of conditions. If the industrial train- 
ing of the child during his early years has been what 
it ought to be, this is the spirit in which he will arrive 
at the age of adolescence. This is especially the spirit 
which is most needed to carry on our great industries 
of to-day and the greater the abundance in which we 
can create it the more secure will we be as a nation 
in industrial competition. Something more than a 
training in skilled movements is necessary. It is the 
continual emotional and instinctive response to what 
is deep and fundamental in active, efficient, industrial 
life that is most needed, and which can be produced 
only by an industrial ideal grounded in the child's love 
of out-of-doors, and of productive activity carried on 
in the spirit of free play. We need the industrial ideal 
throughout the whole school system. The right in- 
dustrial training stimulates the instinctive powers of 
the child as nothing else does. 

But it is not only from the standpoint of the de- 
velopment of the child as an individual that we must 



PHYSICAL AND INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 137 

consider the problem of education for and by means 
of industry. The needs of society must also be taken 
into consideration. Our educational system has failed 
to make progress in step with the changes in industrial 
conditions outside it. In the industrial world new 
methods appear almost daily, and it is all rilled with 
the spirit of eagerness and push. It demands the best 
energies of most of our people, and sets conditions, to 
succeed under which, an ever more complete special- 
isation is required. Yet our school system continues 
to teach with special reference, not to the many who 
will be absorbed into this industrial system, but in the 
interests of the few who will go on to higher educa- 
tion. After the fifth or sixth grade our whole effort 
is to fit for clerical positions, rather than to provide 
for the needs of the great masses. The child's native 
interests in constructive activity are rather suppressed 
than developed. This is partly due to a needless horror 
we have had of utilitarian results in education, which 
has led us to give relatively too much attention to 
purely cultural values, even in the face of the fact that 
we know almost nothing of the effects of culture, nor 
how any general ability may be trained, nor whether 
the power acquired in studying one subject may be 
transferred to another. So the school has grown more 
and more away from life, and has become more in- 
active as life has become more active. 

Another cause of the lack of adjustment of the 
school to the conditions of real life is that we have 
believed there is but one best way of educating a child, 
and one body of culture materials upon which he may 



138 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

be raised to intellectual maturity. It is precisely the 
opposite view which the industrial idea demands and 
teaches. It is certain that there are many ways of 
educating a child, and many different bodies of culture 
material, all perhaps equally good, or each suited es- 
pecially to the needs of one class of mind or type of 
social order. The method of knowledge has no es- 
pecial claim to a supreme place. It was suited to an 
earlier and different stage of life than our own. In- 
dustrial schools have demonstrated completely that 
quite as high a grade of intellectual work is required 
in training for industry as for the professions, and 
they have helped to rescue us from the inconsistency 
of preaching the dignity of labour, and refusing at 
the same time to consider its elements worthy to be 
taught in our schools. 

The need of industrial training is no mere demand 
for the introduction of a topic into the curriculum, but 
it involves a reconstruction of the whole spirit of our 
educational system, from the bottom to the top. In 
fact, without a better industrial education, we cannot 
long hold our place as a nation. We have depended 
in the past upon our resources and abundant fertility, 
both in population and in products of the land, and 
upon our high protective tariff. We have been waste- 
ful of everything, and have failed all along the line 
to utilise any of the results of the sciences that might 
have been so helpful in the world of business and in- 
dustry, and which we must now use. 

To meet this need we must first have a differentiation 
of schools. Various schools might be organised in 



PHYSICAL AND INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 139 

such a way that each would lead toward some one 
group of industries. We must provide all opportunity 
for selective interests, for giving scope to special abil- 
ity and inclination, keeping youth in touch with real 
life, and at the same time making training truly cul- 
tural. There must be many kinds of courses and 
schools, technical and every other kind of industrial 
institute, open day and evening. We greatly need, too, 
vocational experts who, by studying the capacities of 
individuals, will help to eliminate the waste in human 
energy now so prevalent, and to bring the young more 
successfully to the stage of citizenship and self-respect 
which comes only through self-support. A great 
many difficulties and problems are involved, in the 
ever-earlier vocational efficiency and choice of occu- 
pation that is demanded. We must learn how to ac- 
complish this without conflicting with our American 
ideals of culture ; we must discover how to bring early 
to the child the very latest results in the many fields 
of industry, without, in so doing, violating the steps of 
development. We must learn how to give the best 
of the new while retaining the best of the old. We 
must plan how we may prevent from lapsing to un- 
skilled labour the half -educated boys who leave school 
at about fourteen, many with vocational tendencies 
but without sufficient intellectual interests to carry 
them on further than the point at which the school 
has left them. 

Another problem is presented because modern 
specialisation and utilitarianism have removed from 
the life of industry so many of its humanistic and 



i 4 o GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

cultural features. In the old days of the guilds every 
man was an artist, and his work, possessing more con- 
tacts with life, requiring more varied activity and 
knowledge, was a true education. It is these elements 
that our education for industry must provide, at the 
same time leading the child to a higher degree of 
special efficiency. 

There is no need, however, of failing to find cul- 
tural materials enough in teaching industries. For, 
given a strong vocational interest, a great wealth of 
knowledge can be vitalised by it. It is surprising, in- 
deed, to see how wide a range of facts, laws, and prin- 
ciples, useful in learning a trade, are also of genuine 
humanistic value and interest, and at the same time 
fundamental for scientific knowledge — how intellec- 
tual, in a word, a thoroughly trained artisan must be, 
and how ideal an educational situation it is when such 
a trained man is brought into close contact with eager 
youth. 

There is great need still, in all these industrial fields, 
of the right literature for the young. All of the trades 
are rich in cultural value and human interests, and 
need only the right presentation to be stimulating to 
the mind. We need books on each of the leading 
trades. Such books should give an intelligent view of 
the whole industry in all its relations, in such a way 
as to be intellectually helpful. Once gathered such 
literature might be used in all industrial schools where 
the trades in question are taught. It would help to 
arouse something of the old guild spirit, and to make 
the labourer more loyal to his task. 



PHYSICAL AND INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 141 

Room must be made, too, in our educational system, 
in a much larger way than at present is done, for the 
teaching of business. Business, in one way or an- 
other, now occupies most of all adult thought and 
activity, yet there is no adequate preparation for it, 
nor introduction to it, in our school plan, and particu- 
larly its charms and mysteries are entirely passed over 
at those times when the youth is most susceptible to 
such influences, and is willing to learn from books. 
Indeed, the school seems rather to shelter the child from 
contact with the busy world than to give him an in- 
sight into it. The school, however, need not be 
blamed entirely for this lack of contact. Business has 
neglected its opportunities to interest children. It 
should recognise its own cultural and humanistic val- 
ues, for every business has them, or it could not have 
survived, and have held the life-long service of its 
workers. Corporations must study the human life 
which they handle and know it as well as they do 
the other materials with which they work. They must 
be educational institutions. In many kinds of busi- 
ness there are problems as educative as anything we 
teach in the schools — advertising, buying and selling, 
and many other great activities of trade demand a 
high degree of intellectual capacity. 

Commerce and trade perhaps require the most gen- 
eral of all educational preparation, both theoretical 
and practical. The student of business must not only 
learn from books, but he must be kept in contact with 
actual life at every stage of his progress. The de- 
partments of business in school and college must catch 



142 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

the spirit of the world outside and be receptive to every 
new idea and method, constantly expanding to re- 
ceive everything valuable. The business course, above 
everything else, must never remain fixed and station- 
ary. 

Education for the farm is another broad and im- 
portant field of the new education. It must have at 
its base a love of nature and of the country, and a 
just valuation of city life. A step in cultivating the 
right spirit is the school garden, which is physically, 
morally, and mentally beneficial to children. But the 
spirit and enthusiasm, so aroused, must not be al- 
lowed to die out, in the secondary school, as is now 
the case. We need to keep it alive and build upon 
it an interest in the problems of practical biology, 
which play so great a part in life. All education for 
agricultural life has the advantage that it goes back 
to old phyletic roots. We must make the most possi- 
ble of these native forces. The modern courses in 
the agricultural college are likely to weaken the funda- 
mental instincts which draw youth to the country, and 
even to alienate them permanently from it. 

The problem of teaching trades to women is an- 
other of the great and difficult questions of the day. 
Teaching trade and teaching domesticity are diametri- 
cally opposed to one another, demanding opposing 
ideals and methods. The latter is general, all-sided, 
and evokes the whole personality; the former is spe- 
cial, demanding usually one or a small group of abili- 
ties. The fundamental industry of woman must be 
domestic life, and we must raise the dignity of this 



PHYSICAL AND INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 143 

and make it central to everything. We must teach 
the dignity and values of the art of cooking, its re- 
lations to science, its recapitulatory phases. We must 
create such a new ideal of domestic life that the girl 
who arrives at the middle teens without a practical 
knowledge of cooking, sewing, laundering, and the 
care of children will be regarded as unprepared for 
life. 

Manual Training. — Manual training cannot be 
marked off definitely from industrial training, and in 
an ideal system of industrial education, it would be 
absorbed. We can define manual training, as at pres- 
ent conducted, as motor education, without reference 
to specialised occupation. It aims to be generic, and 
to train hand and brain in a general way. So it is an 
important movement in education and is based upon 
sound principles. It teaches motor control, and it 
stimulates interest in many children, to whom the less 
active tasks of the school do not appeal. As com- 
pared with most of the work in the school, it has the 
advantage of being definite and objective. Instruction 
and criticism can be made precise, and the child can 
at once see his failures and limitations. There is 
nothing he can conceal, and it leads to an appreciation 
of good, honest work. 

Yet, considered from the genetic point of view, 
most of the present manual training seems narrow and 
inadequate. We must not think of it as a final stage, 
but as a beginning, the chief service of which, so far, 
has been to shatter our idol of purely intellectual edu- 
cation, and its corollary that nothing useful must be 



144 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

taught in the school. At present, the manual training 
is not sufficiently liberal and humanistic, and it does 
not connect well with the later stages of school, nor 
with practical life — and it is likely to leave an im- 
pression that work is monotonous and pedantically ac- 
curate. All these errors and limitations result from 
failure to recognise sufficiently the genetic steps in 
the child's development, and the phyletic impulse 
behind all natural activity. The Sloyd work, for ex- 
ample, is centred too much upon accuracy, and em- 
phasises excessively the feature of training, and too 
little that of usefulness and interest from the child's 
point of view. Its teachers are too often formalists. 
They try to lead the child through a number of care- 
fully graded steps, and their systems are open to the 
same criticism that all logically arranged curricula are. 
They put too much stress upon method and formal dis- 
cipline, train too limited areas of the brain, and do 
not represent at all adequately the three hundred man- 
ual occupations of our present industrial life. They 
have not begun, as they ought, with the study of the 
great fundamental types of human activity. They have 
used too limited a range of materials, and because they 
have not gone back to beginnings they have failed 
to take advantage of natural interests, to stimulate 
the mind broadly, and to connect with other interests, 
especially with science, which is quite as closely re- 
lated to the constructive interests of the child, as to 
the practical life of the adult. In a word, further de- 
velopment must go on from the point at which present 
methods have most failed, and arouse the very deepest 



PHYSICAL AND INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 145 

instinctive interests, in order to make manual training 
not merely an education of the hand, but of the whole 
individuality of the child. It must be extended in two 
directions, toward a broader mental training, and to- 
ward practical issues in the industrial life. Whatever 
the work may be, these ends must be kept in view. 
In such work as basket-weaving, for example, we must 
make the manual work contribute to mental growth and 
appeal to deep instincts, just as it did in the savage, 
who has often woven into his work story and legend, 
symbolism of plant and animal life, and even his own 
history and inner life. Manual work must be directed 
not merely to producing mechanics nor to training men- 
tal faculties, such as observation; but it must connect 
with the most vital needs of technicians, business men, 
scholars, and professional men. So considered, it is 
full of promise. 

A manual course should begin with rough work, 
with at first much practice in measuring, and the mak- 
ing of measuring rods and other simple tools. In con- 
nection with this, some elementary mathematics could 
be introduced. Then might come work with the 
wooden square and compasses ; next such work as the 
mortising of cross sticks, as in the making of kites, 
and so on to finer and more skilful work. It should 
all connect with the native interests of the child, and 
be suited to his stage of motor development. The 
making of something the child wants should be the 
first principle. Therefore in the first years the con- 
struction of toys may well be the centre of all the work. 
Many materials should be used, and a great variety of 



146 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

objects made. Much activity similar to that of primitive 
industries may be introduced, for much that was once 
done for practical use now appeals to the child as 
play. At the stage in which kites are dominant much 
can be made of this interest. Books on the subject 
should be read, and the child's mind filled with what- 
ever knowledge is relevant, such as the story of the 
conquest of the air, and many scientific principles. 
Tops may be made the subject of another stage or 
chapter in manual work. They appeal to practical in- 
terests, and also form a nucleus about which some 
of the most fundamental principles of physics can be 
grouped, leading to an understanding of vortexes, 
atoms, stellar systems, and the like. Another interest, 
strong in boys, is in fire-arms. The story of gun mak- 
ing, and the history of weapons generally, should go 
with this, for it is a deep interest in the boy. Another 
excellent field is the making of puppet theatres, for this 
connects with literary and historical interests in a nat- 
ural way. Magic is another good point of departure. 
There are also splendid resources in photography, and 
in the whole field of inventions, glass blowing, and 
plumbing, the last connecting well with problems of 
biology, physics, and chemistry. 

In the high school, or higher grades, the work of 
manual training should centre about the scientific work 
of the school — chemistry, physics, and biology. The 
important principle here involved is that scientific in- 
struments are more generic than machines of any kind, 
and the making of them requires more fundamental 



PHYSICAL AND INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 147 

principles. They deal with basic laws of motion, and 
not with special principles. Therefore they are suited 
admirably to the age of adolescence, in which the 
science and activities need most of all to be kept in the 
generic stage. The making of toys and kites, the study 
and practice of photography, and similar problems may 
still be an interest. The arts and crafts movement 
contains a principle that needs to be emphasised in 
planning the manual work at the time of adolescence. 
The purpose of this movement is the idealisation of 
the arts. It is this appeal to the aesthetic feelings which 
makes it of special importance at adolescence, for 
thus the industrial arts may be connected with the 
higher sentiments, and the motor interests may be 
carried on up through all the range of the feelings. 
This is the time when ideals of work and art sink 
deepest into the mind, when the youth is susceptible 
to the influence of all models, and capable of storing 
up impressions which can make their appearance in 
active form only later. At this time, therefore, the 
efferent side of training, the expression and production, 
should not be carried too far. There should not be 
precision and technique, so much as self-expression in 
those forms of activity which are most natural and 
easy. Thus ideals will become fixed, and broad lines 
of interest established. The first and guiding interest 
on the part of the educator must be then as always the 
needs and nature of the youth, and not the requirements 
of the art nor the perfection of the product — a point 
at which many of the advocates of art for youth 



148 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

fail. Their interest is too strongly centred upon the 
ideals of the art, and too little upon the nature of the 
child. 

Gymnastics and Athletics. — Gymnastics and ath- 
letics represent the most conscious effort on the part 
of education to find a substitute under the abnormal 
conditions of city life for the old order of body-train- 
ing, which man had in a state of nature and more 
primitive social conditions. It is certain that neither 
the free life of the child out of school nor the or- 
dinary motor occupations of the school properly train 
the body, nor do they establish health such as must be 
acquired in youth if later life is to be normal, strong, 
and efficient. At some time in the future an industrial 
education such as has just been described may do this, 
but this is perhaps a far-away ideal ; in the meantime 
there is a serious problem in the motor life of the 
school child. 

There are now a great number of physical culture 
schemes and systems but all together are not adequate 
to cope with the bodily deterioration that has resulted 
from the changed industrial life. The need is for a 
revolution in all motor training of the young. We 
need a new philosophy of health, and a great leader 
of a national movement of physical education. Es- 
pecially to adolescence would such a reawakening of en- 
thusiasm for the motor life come as salvation. The 
ideal must not be merely athletic, a wide-spread interest 
in games and sports for their own sakes, which is a 
danger of our present interests, nor in the development 
of champions and experts, but what is wanted is a 



PHYSICAL AND INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 149 

general popular interest in body culture, and a means 
of effectively raising the standards of the motor life 
of the whole community and nation, and so well that 
the benefits will be passed on to future generations. A 
system of health culture which can do this must be 
fundamental, and must appeal to deep motives, far 
more profound than our interests in our national 
games, and the athletic ideals of college and athletic 
club. Ethical and intellectual motives must be 
brought in, and the highest philanthropic and parental 
instincts aroused. Physical culture must become a 
university and college study, on equal footing with all 
others, and only thus will the proper influence begin 
to come from above downward to direct the whole 
movement. There must be specially trained teachers 
for all the grades and degrees of the science of physical 
development. 

There are in the field at least four partial and some- 
what distinct ideas or ideals of physical culture, each 
strongly represented by enthusiastic teachers, but no 
one alone, nor all together, nearly accomplish all that 
is needed. These are: (1) the perfection of the body 
as a mechanism; (2) complete volitional control of 
the body; (3) economic posture and movement; (4) 
symmetrical development. All these fail to give us 
basic principles. 

Whatever the principles of physical training may 
be in detail they must be essentially biological. Train- 
ing of the body must follow the general laws of mental 
and physical development of the child, and must be 
based upon them. The interest and the needs of the 



150 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

growing child must be the guide, and the spirit of it 
all must be that of play. Play is both mental and 
physical activity, and it is just at this point, in the 
lack of mental incitement, that so many of our physical 
culture methods are unnatural. Play is the ideal type 
of physical activity for the young and in it may be 
found all methods. They must all be play-motived. 
Play is the inner force that takes up mere exercise into 
a larger whole and co-ordinates it with all other activi- 
ties of life. It alone provides fully for the higher 
moral and mental needs that must be met in an ideal 
physical culture system. 

It is from this standpoint of directed play activity 
that all the problems of exercise, both in the lower 
and the higher grades, must be considered. It is from 
this standpoint, too, that the athletics of the higher 
grade must be studied, as well as the school activities 
of children. Athletic work, thus conceived, is a regu- 
lator and trainer, not only of the muscles, but of all 
instincts and impulses, which, without such a train- 
ing, can never be normal, nor raised to the highest 
level/ Its possibilities and dangers are both great. At 
the best, athletics can train all the higher motives of 
conduct, and all religious and moral ideals. But im- 
properly conducted, athletics tend to help only the 
few who participate, and not all of these ; and elements 
of professionalism and low social ideals enter. The 
aim of all such work in the college must never be lost 
from sight. Sport is not for its own sake, nor yet 
for the glory of the college ; it is a practical means of 
bringing youth to complete manhood. All students 



PHYSICAL AND INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 151 

must be reached. Physical ideals must be made to 
effect a harmony of body and mind, extending even 
to minor manners and deportment. The culture his- 
tory of athletics needs to be worked over, and utilised 
in teaching. Colleges should offer courses in a very 
broad field of hygienic studies, in which physical train- 
ing is the centre. More must be made of all interests, 
such as the military, which contain possibilities of 
health culture and morality. In this way the intel- 
lectual and the athletic interests would be combined in 
a natural manner. Properly directed, the desire on 
the part of the young to be healthy, strong, and beau- 
tiful is the greatest of all incentives to all kinds of 
strenuous effort, both mental and physical. 

. References. — 22, 44, 51, 73, 112, 113, 170, 176, 180, 206, 218, 
269, 278, Educational Problems. 



CHAPTER X 

EDUCATION OF THE EMOTIONS 

It may be said without exaggeration that the feel- 
ings make up nine-tenths of life. Everywhere, where 
there is interest or motive, desire, enthusiasm, or 
habit, there is a problem of the education of the emo- 
tions. It arises in every school subject, in every de- 
partment, from the lowest to the highest, and is so 
universal and omnipresent that we are in danger of 
ignoring and forgetting that the deeper things in life 
that condition everything else, and upon which all else 
rests, must be the first objects of our thought and de- 
mand our most serious efforts. We may state gen- 
eral principles, yet all such rules must be inadequate 
to express that which is almost equivalent to education 
itself. Feeling is everywhere the great force that 
drives life. To direct it aright is, in a large sense, 
what we mean by education. 

In the problem of the education of the feelings it is 
the great principle of recapitulation which, as in other 
departments, points the way. The child passes through 
racial stages, and he must be educated at each step 
with reference to the stage in which he then is, and 
not according to the ultimate goal to be reached. 
Emotional traits that appear undesirable from the 
adult's point of view, when considered from that of 

152 



EDUCATION OF THE EMOTIONS 153 

genetic psychology, are seen to be normal and neces- 
sary. We may, in one way, approach the problem of 
training of the emotional life by following out this 
view in its application to the education of the primary 
feelings, such as pleasure, pain, anger, fear and the 
like. Yet what this gains in definiteness is more than 
lost again, if one should be content with any such prin- 
ciples as an adequate pedagogy of the feelings. It is 
rather in those higher states of feeling and thought 
that make up our moral, our religious, and our aesthetic 
experiences that we discover the full significance of 
the feelings, and the challenge they offer to all our 
resources of intelligence and pedagogical power to cope 
with them. What follows is the application of the 
recapitulatory principle to a few of the more concrete 
and definite aspects of an educational problem which, 
as a whole, must, from its very nature, be the most 
varied, subtle, and universal of all, involved in every- 
thing we do for the child, at many points baffling, 
and demanding far greater knowledge upon the 
most common themes of psychology than we yet 
possess. 

Pleasure and pain have been the great educators in 
the world — a truth which in the present artificial con- 
ditions of life we are likely to forget. We minimise 
pleasure and regard pain as wholly evil and to be 
eliminated, thus violating nature. Children must not 
be too much protected from pain and hardship. With- 
out painful effort the mind and body degenerate. 
There may be too much protection against cold, and 
even hunger, for all the feelings must be strongly 



154 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

stimulated, if all possible values of racial experience 
are to be preserved. 

Fear. — We have seen that, though fear has been 
necessary to the race, it is now, in the present condi- 
tions of civilised life, often out of relation to real 
dangers. The conclusion might easily be reached that 
it no longer serves a useful purpose, and that we should 
try in every way to overcome it. This is not true, for 
fear still performs an important function in life. The 
problem is not how to eliminate fear altogether, but 
to learn how to utilise it as an educative force. Chil- 
dren must be taught to fear rightly as well as think 
correctly, and the former is no less important than 
the latter. A wise training in fears would by no 
means protect the child against all the cruder and more 
drastic fears, for fear serves a much wider purpose 
than to protect us from danger. Fear, as the child 
passes through its stages, in a normal way, leaves be- 
hind it a foundation upon which higher sentiments 
are built; and especially the moral and the religious 
life would be poorer but for the emotion of fear, even 
the crudest and most animal-like forms of it. For 
out of the fear grow such sentiments as reverence, the 
worship of the sublime, and of the awe-inspiring. The 
child fears God better because he has deeply feared 
thunder, and because his mind has been sensitised by 
rude contacts with all of nature's threats. And were 
all fear wanting, a great number of intellectual mo- 
tives would be lost. 

One of the best tests of soundness of heredity is 
the ability of the individual to pass through the stages 



EDUCATION OF THE EMOTIONS 155 

of fear safely, and to utilise the lower in stimulating 
higher sentiments and intellectual interests. Capacity 
for fear differs greatly among individuals, and some 
require far more of such stimulus to arouse their ac- 
tivities. A too care-free and protected childhood, 
however, is in every case a calamity, and it stands in 
the way of complete maturity. Fear has been one of 
the chief spurs to all scientific enquiry, and it is this 
issue of the cruder fears into attitudes of respect and 
understanding that is wanted in the training of the 
child. This is, too, the normal basis of attention and 
concentration. 

Anger. — The history of anger in the race, and of 
its growth in the individual, indicates that it must also 
be counted among the great educative forces in the 
life of the child, and that it must not be regarded as 
merely a fault or defect in human nature. It still has 
its uses, and it can safely be asserted that at least nor- 
mal, healthy, male manhood will never be entirely 
peaceable. The complete suppression of warfare and 
anger, and the substitution of universal peace and 
brotherly love would indicate an end of progress in the 
race, and a beginning of degeneration. We need strife 
and its motive force anger, in some degree and form. 
The possession of strong passions, well under control, 
is the secret of the power of character, and a necessary 
condition for the highest mental tension which must 
always be the state in which the best work of the 
world will be done. The problem of training anger 
is how to make it a power, and not a waste of physical, 
mental, and moral energy. The child must be trained 



156 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

especially against forming habits of temper, the quick 
and wasteful and ineffective response to stimuli, which 
is the opposite of the creative tension of properly con- 
trolled anger. 

For all boy life anger, strongly expressed, is natural 
and normal. Many situations must be met with anger, 
that cannot be coped with in any other way. The con- 
flicts of boys are normal, and periods of combativeness 
are necessary steps toward a properly balanced social 
life. Combat and anger teach wholesome lessons of 
self-reliance, and they stimulate a valuable kind of 
courage. To try to eliminate this natural anger from 
the child is wrong and comes from an erroneous idea 
of morality. To destroy anger in the child, and to 
produce cowardice, would be no gain, either morally 
or physically. The child must arrive at maturity with 
a wholesome power of indignation which he may ex- 
press forcibly when the occasion calls for it. Anger 
has its place, too, in the adult's attitude toward the 
faults of the child. Oftentimes punishment, in right- 
eous wrath, is the only effective check for faults. Its 
power must not be lost in a fatuous ideal of self-con- 
trol and poise. The world has still a need of anger in 
many of its tasks. 

Social Emotions. — Social emotions can develop 
normally only under one condition, free complex social 
relations, in which the child has many associates, and 
co-ordinates with a wide range of individualities. It 
is wrong to limit the companionship of the child too 
much to one or a few types of children, in the fear 
that he will learn evil. It is in the give and take of 



EDUCATION OF THE EMOTIONS 157 

an active social life that the child educates himself as 
he can in no other way. He should have both good 
and bad companions. The bad help to teach him con- 
trasts between good and evil, and to set standards for 
his own conduct. A certain degree of exposure to evil 
is necessary for moral welfare. Of course the vicious 
companion must be avoided, especially during the 
formative years of early adolescence. Boys need some 
companionship with older boys, and this was one of 
the great advantages of the country school. In the 
years of adolescence, the companions of the boy are 
all-important factors in shaping his life. They help 
to set his fashions, and to fix his standards of conduct. 
Societies and gangs, each at its own proper period, are 
great forces in the life of the child, and it is quite as 
important to guide such social life correctly as to feed 
the mind with facts. In the college years, too, the life 
outside the classroom is far more important to the stu- 
dent, oftentimes, than the subjects he studies with 
professors. A companion admired for athletic prow- 
ess, or for other reasons, may be more influential in 
shaping all ideals of a youth than any other force, and 
the power of a single leader among young men may 
extend very far. 

The strongest of all social motives in man is to win 
the good will of his fellows, and it is one of the chief 
problems of a pedagogy of the social feelings to under- 
stand how to train and utilise this motive to the best 
advantage. The effort must be to keep a proper bal- 
ance, in the development of self-consciousness, between 
excess of boldness and too much shyness or reticence. 



158 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

Vanity, egotism, and self-assertiveness are very readily 
produced in some temperaments, and in others there 
is a tendency toward shyness, distrust, and shrinking 
from all unsympathetic contact. Particularly in girls, 
and especially in regard to consciousness of clothes, the 
way to abnormal self-consciousness is easy. A little 
lack of naturalness here, or the effect of slight sugges- 
tions from others, will produce in the child a train of 
consequences leading to affectation and deceit. Simi- 
lar impulses in the male, more likely to centre about 
showing off or bravery, often lead to perverted ideals 
of courage and honour, and even to criminality. Ig- 
norance and injudicious treatment of the child on the 
part of parent or teacher are more likely to be at the 
bottom of such abnormalities, both in girls and in boys, 
than are the inherent tendencies of the child. 

On the other hand, the excessive shyness of the child 
that leads to the fear of all strangers is a serious prob- 
lem. Any fear in excess greatly limits life, and social 
fears may stunt growth in many directions. Excessive 
fear in this direction exerts a harmful influence upon 
all motor expression, and brings out abnormal habits 
and automatisms. Disapproval and lack of under- 
standing and sympathy on the part of elders will 
greatly exaggerate the trouble, and make havoc in the 
emotional life. The personality is prevented, by re- 
pression, from developing normally. All these prob- 
lems of the social life are to a great extent individual. 
It is the problem of the proper development of individ- 
uality, the correct balance between the impulses of so- 
cial aggressiveness, and of reserve, respect, and sub- 



EDUCATION OF THE EMOTIONS 159 

mission. Only an intimate knowledge of individual 
children can cope with it. 

Less definite still must be at present the pedagogical 
conclusions about such emotions as humour — about 
the place of wit and laughter, ridicule, and the habits 
of teasing, and the practical joke. All these being 
expressions of fundamental instincts of the child, they 
must have practical bearings upon his education, and 
possibly far more than we as yet know are controllable. 
That ridicule and sarcasm, rightly directed, have a 
value and great pedagogic effect upon some types of 
temperament seems certain. Laughter has arisen in 
part in connection with the joy of conquest of enemies 
and the destruction of prey, and from this it has been 
taken up into the expressions of the more indirect 
modes of disposing of opponents, and the elimination 
of the undesirable. Excessive egoism is thus kept 
within bounds. Ridicule implies a sense of superiority 
and it is a powerful weapon in educating the social 
consciousness. The victim is abased, and must re- 
adjust his self-knowledge and self-valuation. Thus so- 
ciety resists the invasion of undesirable variations. 
Much can be said, too, in favour of the practical joke, 
both as a quickener of dull minds, and as a salutary 
influence upon those having a premature self-impor- 
tance or too great conceit. The practical joke is war, 
cruelty, torture, reduced to the proportions of play. 

Pity. — The same arguments may be applied to the 
emotion of pity, as to anger and fear. The sentiment 
of pity is often so overdrawn in those who are very 
sensitive to it, it so often spends itself in mere feeling, 



i6o GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

so readily becomes weak, morbid, and effeminate — and 
in general shows so plainly that it is an emotion out of 
harmony with the real needs of life, and with the best 
means of assisting those who most need help that it 
is quite natural that it has often been looked upon, as 
anger and fear have been, as a defect of human nature, 
as a hindrance rather than an incitement tb effective 
action. Yet this is not an adequate account of the 
function of pity. Perhaps the best of all methods of 
rightly exercising this sentiment in education is in the 
training of those sentiments directly connected with 
parenthood. The right attitude toward the infant and 
growing child is the best altruism, and education should 
include the conscious effort to bring out these parental 
instincts, and to train them in definite forms of helpful- 
ness. Without a wholesome sensitiveness to the emo- 
tion of pity, it is impossible for the religious life to be 
brought to complete fulfilment. Christianity is based 
in part upon this sentiment, and the very centre of the 
New Testament lesson is one of pity. In fact the clos- 
ing scene of the life of Jesus is the masterpiece of 
pathos of all history. 

Right direction of altruism, therefore, is a deep 
and important problem of education. The legitimate 
expression of pity is in some act leading toward the 
relief of suffering. To learn to pity thus actively, 
where moral insight shows duty, is the task to be ac- 
complished. The defect in the sentiment of pity in its 
social aspects, and in its development in the life of the 
individual, is that it goes out relatively too much to 
that which cannot be remedied, and thus expends itself 



EDUCATION OF THE EMOTIONS 161 

without practical result. We need a change of ideals 
in this regard. The function of pity is not so much to 
cast painful glances back upon the past, as to make 
smooth the future. The things most worthy of pity 
are the hardships of youths which stand in the way of 
their arriving at the highest maturity, and fitting them- 
selves to increase the hereditary values in the world. 

Sexual Emotions. — It would be impossible to over- 
estimate the importance of the pedagogy of the sexual 
function and its emotions. The sexual life is con- 
nected in the most intimate way with every other part 
of life, and no theory of education can be well- 
grounded that does not recognise its central place. 
There is much more sex preceding puberty than we 
have been accustomed to think. Only a part of the 
original sexual factors are organised to conserve the 
function of procreation. The rest make up the greater 
part of human interests and effort. Important at all 
times, it becomes of the first consideration at the time 
of puberty when the proper education and control of 
this part of the emotional life is absolutely necessary 
for the sake of the higher functions dependent upon it. 
It is safe to say that most that is best in life after 
puberty is secondary sexual in its origin ; that is, is an 
outgrowth of the sexual life of the race, and that the 
best development depends completely upon the nor- 
mality of the primary function of sex. Man has 
civilised himself largely by a conflict with his sexual 
nature, and considered from this point of view, sex 
has been of the highest importance for national growth 
and prosperity, for morals and religion. When we 



162 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

understand how deeply the sexual life is involved in 
everything valuable in life, how many and how serious 
are the disturbances to which it is subject, how insidi- 
ous the suggestions that assail it from many sources, 
it ought to be plain that no single remedy nor peda- 
gogical measure can be applied, but that the best of 
wisdom must constantly be brought to bear upon the 
problem. We do not yet fully understand the depth 
of the problem of sexual education. 

Sexual education must begin in infancy. All hy- 
gienic measures in regard to clothing, bathing, cor- 
rection of local disturbances, must be attended to 
scrupulously, and there must be constant watchfulness 
for wrong habits. In general, all excited states must 
be avoided, even in the nursery. There must not be 
excessive fondling, and especially stroking and patting 
that tend toward culminating sensations are to be 
avoided. All intense spasms of feeling are bad for 
the sexual life. When ability to understand the mean- 
ing of reproduction comes, the parent's duty is to see 
that the child's first knowledge is not obtained from 
evil companions, and that all the future thoughts of 
the child about the origin shall not thus be connected 
with shame, deceit, and vulgarity. The power of an 
idea in the life of a child is very great. It is un- 
mistakably the duty of the home to be the first in- 
structor in sex. The aim of instruction is to forestall 
evil, and not to cure it. As early as eight or ten there 
should be definite information about sexual matters, 
though of course information beyond the years should 
not be given. Right knowledge has the effect of keep- 



EDUCATION OF THE EMOTIONS 163 

ing the stages of growth normal and of preventing 
mental injuries. For the girl, emphasis must be al- 
ways upon the function of child-bearing, so that later 
the thoughts of love shall never be separated from 
thoughts of motherhood. It is best that an introduc- 
tion be made through myths of the creative life at a 
very early age, later by observation of fertilisation in 
plant life. The teaching in regard to the maternal 
function should always come first. The study of 
lower forms of life is best. There will need to be 
much individual variation in the teaching of this diffi- 
cult subject; much will depend upon the temperament 
and surroundings of the child, both as to the manner 
and the time of teaching. In general, it seems best 
that such lessons be brief, and that much care be taken 
to select moments when the mind is favourably dis- 
posed, and the relations between teacher and child are 
sympathetic. All children, we can now claim, should 
have such instruction before they go to school. Nor- 
mal schools should prepare teachers to give this knowl- 
edge to pupils who need it, for if the teacher under- 
stand the nature of the dangers involved, she can do 
much to prevent moral contagion, which is all too 
common among school children, and to keep the social 
relations of the child wholesome and normal. Young 
children must by every means be led toward natural 
and wholesome inter-sexual relations. Association in 
play between the sexes is very important for both boy 
and girl, for the foundation of many interests and 
virtues can be laid in this way and in no other. 

If instruction in sex has been rightly imparted be- 



164 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

fore puberty, sex knowledge will not burst upon the 
child at the moment when the new impulses are de- 
veloping, and the mind is peculiarly susceptible to 
harmful influences. As this period approaches, more 
indirect methods of controlling the sexual emotions 
must be relied upon ; for, at this time, when the senti- 
ments are budding and ideals are forming, any rude 
presentation of the fact of sex may do great harm, 
causing morbid phenomena, and even perversion of 
instincts. Now as the pubertal stress approaches, 
preparation must be made by stimulating and getting 
ready those interests, the effect of which is to control 
and transform the primary passions. Of all these 
means the ideals of physical perfection lead. All 
vigorous motor activity is a means of control. Every 
intellectual interest is also a sedative of sex. Music, 
indeed all art, and all industrial interests also perform 
the function of irradiating the sexual life and taking 
it up into higher enthusiasms and tensions. In a sense 
the whole problem of sexual education at this time of 
life is to raise the lower to the higher enthusiasm. 
Merely to control and check by will is often a waste- 
ful method, but to control by directing energy into 
new channels uses power to advantage. Often the 
value of training in the technique of an art, acquired 
before puberty, becomes apparent only after the onset 
of maturity, when the art becomes the vehicle of ex- 
pression of energies that would otherwise find vent in 
a low form. Therefore everything related to sex as 
secondary characteristic must be trained. Deport- 
ment, manners, dress, ornament, personal loyalty, 



EDUCATION OF THE EMOTIONS 165 

friendships, the sentiment of honour, the nobler love, 
ideals of body keeping, love of rhythmical movement, 
religion — all these may be regarded as substitutes for 
the sexual instinct, and must be cultivated in the right 
way, as means of control of passions, and of bringing 
the youth over the trying period in which he is strug- 
gling to make his way toward the higher civilisation. 
Whatever, in any way, helps to keep the sexual func- 
tions normal, also aids in making good ideals and keep- 
ing interests strong and sound. But if the sexual life 
be perverted it is impossible for these irradiations to 
be strongly motived, and the individual will fall short 
of complete maturity at some point. 

As to direct teaching in regard to sex, the problem 
is much more difficult during adolescence than before. 
Yet all now admit that some such instruction is neces- 
sary. Girls need to be taught plainly the physiology 
and hygiene of the functions that are now being es- 
tablished, and there must be careful investigation of 
personal needs and habits. All lessons must be plain 
and sensible. Young people must be made to under- 
stand clearly that many coveted prizes depend much 
upon correct sexual habits. The teaching of morality, 
and especially religion, has now a day of opportunity. 
It is important to connect the sexual life with the re- 
ligious, and it can safely be said that religion serves 
now to save youth from sexual temptation, more than 
any other purpose. 

We are not yet equipped with adequate literature 
to meet the needs of sexual instruction. With this 
theme as a centre a vast amount of scientific knowl- 



i66 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

edge and general culture could be conveyed. There 
should be text-books graded to age, dealing with sex 
as it appears in botany, and in zoology. We need 
books on such subjects as the history of marriage, di- 
vorce, the relation between religion and sex, and many 
other related topics. Especially should we be pre- 
pared now to teach to all youth in high school and col- 
lege, the main principles of eugenics. This is able to 
elevate the sexual impulses, to give new interest in the 
higher altruism, which is the service of humanity, and 
to arouse enthusiasm for all the deeper problems of 
history and sociology. 

References. — 112, 128, 172, 192, 194, 196, 203, 254, 260, 271, 
285, E. P. See also references at end of chapter on moral 
education. 



CHAPTER XI 

MORAL EDUCATION 

Moral education is the most vital and most difficult 
of all the problems of human culture. It is a prob- 
lem, not for educators alone to solve, but for the whole 
nation. In a sense all education is moral, for the end 
of all teaching is to complete the moral growth of the 
child, and to impart to him the moral ideals of the 
race. No knowledge is merely for its own sake, but all 
must in some way affect conduct. All conduct, too, is 
in some sense moral conduct. 

Moral education, therefore, cannot be compressed 
into a single formula, as though it were a training of 
some one emotion or habit. It must touch life at all 
points, recognising that its work is to train a great 
force, which, as enthusiasm, can be turned into many 
different channels. Every institution must take part 
in this effort. Besides the school, we need many other 
agencies. We need a reformed theatre. We need 
gymnasia, holding up high ideals of physical perfec- 
tion. Opportunity for an abundance of wholesome 
social life must be provided. The church must per- 
form a more active part in moral control, and become 
more practical. We need, indeed, a synthesis of all 
the agencies that make for moral welfare, knowing 

167 



168 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

that the problem is nothing less than that of conserv- 
ing the most precious of our resources — the moral 
enthusiasm of the young. 

Moral training must begin in early infancy. We 
must recognise the fact that physical hygiene is the 
basis of all later morality, and that the establishment 
of good habits of sleep, feeding, and the like is quite 
as much a part of moral education as anything that 
will follow. In many other ways the mother's early 
influence upon the child, her caresses, and the example 
of her emotions and temperament, contain possibili- 
ties both of good and evil for the child. She very 
early impresses strongly her type of behaviour upon 
the infant. 

Soon the question of obedience arises, and here 
another critical situation for all the child's future life 
appears. The child must be taught to make immedi- 
ate and unfailing response to the demands of the 
parent. Reasons must not be given, but the child must 
be made to feel that he must obey simply because the 
parent wills it. The parent must be the infallible 
moral law, and his word be inexorable. 

Usually before the school age the question of 
truthfulness will arise, and this may be regarded as 
typical of many problems of the moral life. Truth- 
telling is a complex virtue, and depends upon several 
different motives, some of which come late. We must 
understand that different kinds of lying have very 
different moral significance, and that lying differs in 
gravity at different stages of childhood. The most 
common and least reprehensible lie of the child is the 



MORAL EDUCATION 169 

imaginative lie, the failure to tell the truth because 
the world of the senses and the world of the imagina- 
tion are not yet clearly differentiated from one 
another. In most children this spirit needs to be 
stimulated and encouraged, rather than repressed. It 
is the normal mode of expression of the feelings in 
the early years. Such romancing contains the healthy 
buds of art and literature, and constantly to repress 
it for the sake of accuracy is wrong. It is natural, 
too, for children to have more than one standard of 
truth, to maintain one code for friends and another 
for enemies. Loyalty to persons is a strong impulse, 
and it comes long before loyalty to truth as an abstract 
ideal. 

But there are other and less desirable motives of 
falsehood. There is the lie for self-protection, which 
must be eliminated, though the child must not be 
forced into a morbid confessional habit. Every child 
needs to have a domain of life all his own, sacred from 
intrusion. Too rude invasion of this, in order to make 
the child frank, will have the reverse effect, and will 
make him untruthful. The lie for personal gain, and 
from an excessive desire to excel or gain favour must 
be crushed out, for later this impulse to play a part, 
and to assume a place for which nature has not in- 
tended the child, may become the source of the gravest 
peril to the moral life. The school in some respects 
encourages untruthfulness of these undesirable kinds, 
and with the beginning of school life new motives for 
lying arise. An unnatural habitat is established for 
the mind, The school demands standards not suited 



170 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

to the child. It fosters undue fear of authority, which 
is a direct road to deception, and so oppressive may 
this authority become that the teacher is regarded as 
legitimate prey for deceit. 

There are many means, direct and indirect, of estab- 
lishing normal truthfulness. Training in observation 
and exact report may be mentioned. Whatever, too, 
gives the child a definite conception of a task, and 
teaches him to face it squarely — such as work in 
manual training — favours honesty. A school con- 
tent that is rich and satisfying to the mind helps, for 
then the child is not tempted to eke out his experience 
in unwholesome ways. Later the best safeguard will 
be the stimulation of a passionate love of knowledge. 
At all times both parent and teacher must set an ex- 
ample of truthfulness by keeping every promise and 
threat, and by avoiding every suspicion of duplicity, 
deceit and casuistry. 

Similar thoughts may be applied to other impulses, 
instincts, and emotions. We must not guard the child 
too closely from a knowledge of evil, and from bad 
companions. All kinds are needed to give breadth of 
moral experience, and to allow the child to form 
standards of good and evil. We must not seek after 
perfection, which is not only impossible, but undesira- 
ble as well. Most adult standards of virtue for chil- 
dren are unnatural and violate genetic principles. 
They tend to repress good qualities. Much of child- 
hood's fault is merely animal propensity, which does 
not in the least tend toward immorality if the environ- 
ment be normal. The child through his own inner 



MORAL EDUCATION 171 

forces will transform such faults into virtues. He 
must be allowed to live out a natural life, and a too 
early appeal to conscience is a mistake. We must not 
continually preach morality. It is a mistake to as- 
sume that the child has a mysterious inner sense or 
conscience that tells him unerringly what is right and 
what is wrong. The moral life is no such simple unit 
as this would imply. It grows in spots, as it were. 
The individual is very complex, and his conduct is the 
result of many strands of impulse and instinct acting 
together, not always in harmony. He tends to pass 
through stages of moral development, in which the 
later and higher sentiments, and all the abstract vir- 
tues, are dependent upon the proper functioning of 
the lower instincts and habits. 

The methods of keeping the growth normal through 
these pre-moral stages must be many and broad. All 
the natural impulses and interests of the child must 
be directed and given moral impetus. There must be 
talks upon such homely topics as fair play, teasing, 
dress, anger, chums, honour in class, white lies, affec- 
tation, cleanliness, order, honour, taste, self-respect, 
treatment of animals, choice of reading, vacation pur- 
suits. This is practical conscience building. If all 
these and other such practical affairs of the child are 
not regulated, higher moral habits will not be estab- 
lished. Teaching of morals must be broad, inductive, 
and to a certain extent experimental — and always in- 
dividual. 

In the special teaching of morality use must be made 
of much of the ethnic literature. The moral stories 



172 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

of the Bible come first, or perhaps preceded by stories 
from the more primitive ethical systems. Use can be 
made of the lives of the Saints, classic and Hindu 
mythology, German tales, and stories from history and 
biography. Another resource is the learning of max- 
ims and short moral classics, which may be made one 
of the most direct means of teaching morals. The 
moral force of pictures must not be overlooked. 
Whenever we can substitute a picture for an abstract 
truth, we are doing a work of economy. The good 
picture always touches some moral point, and presents 
an important aspect of life. Every moral sentiment 
that has typical expression in action lends itself to this 
mode of inculcation. 

Underlying all the teaching of morality, early and 
late, there must be evidence of a belief in a power that 
makes for righteousness and hates unrighteousness, 
and that in the end will punish the wrongdoer, <J This 
should be made a part of the child's attitude toward 
his whole world. [Morality, in other words, always 
needs religion] Without religion the teaching of mor- 
als forces conscience to a too early maturity, and 
makes the moral life narrow and shallow. Such teach- 
ing does not reach the depths of moral force in the 
individual. Our traits of character, it is likely, are 
inheritances and selections from remote animal forms 
of behaviour, and it is the deepest strata which are 
the least amenable to our ordinary methods of in- 
struction, and which demand the stirrings of religious 
feeling. All these depths must be sounded, and all 
external authority, divine and social, must be appealed 



MORAL EDUCATION 173 

to, with the assurance' that every legitimate method 
we may use will be needed in coping with the prob- 
lems of the moral life. 

The time comes, finally, in early adolescence, when 
the child must take over the management of his moral 
life into his own hands. This stage does not declare 
itself all at once as a complete change, but maturity 
of character appears in different parts of life at differ- 
ent times. Only gradually, therefore, can control be 
relaxed, and the new order be allowed to have its way. 
The right method is now a change from direct to indi- 
rect moral teaching and control. It is a time of moral 
danger, when neither inner nor outer forces are quite 
adequate to cope with the situation. Yet this period 
of moral flux must not be forced to too immediate an 
end. Self-conscious and spasmodic effort on the part 
of the youth at this age to adjust the moral life to 
standards only results in making character narrow 
and lacking in depth. The effort must now be to 
guide and suggest in all fields of activity. Every- 
thing must be kept normal and wholesome. Home 
life must be made attractive, and must furnish a good 
moral environment. All intellectual, social, athletic, 
and aesthetic interests must be made to lead to moral 
development. All the previous ethical teaching must 
be brought to a focus, and given a personal applica- 
tion. Religion is needed. It is a time to present ideals 
and principles, but these must appear closely related 
to the interests of daily life. Now, too, is the time 
when personal guidance is so much needed, when both 
boys and girls require close companionship with 



174 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

wise elders, with whom they may talk about the great 
problems of life. 

We need two concrete courses in morals, one for the 
high school, another for the first years of college, 
and for these material is now available in the new 
departments of ethics, sociology, and psychology. 
The need of the youth is to study types of virtues, 
rather than types of ethical theory. He must see the 
elementary virtues embodied and portrayed in types of 
human character. Teaching that is purely moral must 
often be suppressed, but the moral intention should 
always be uppermost. 

This work in practical morality should begin with 
personal regimen and hygiene, and should comprise 
the study of diet, exercise, and care of the body. It 
should include, also, such topics as dress, ornament, 
and etiquette. It must treat the deadly sins and the 
cardinal virtues. It will discuss temperament, habit, 
character, livelihood, citizenship, example, self-respect, 
self-control, unselfishness, honesty, fun, ambition, 
method of study, duties to self, duties to others, duties 
to state and church, and it should end in a few whole- 
some lessons concerning purity, marriage, home-mak- 
ing, fatherhood and motherhood, and duty toward the 
next generation. All such moral lessons must be illus- 
trated freely from history, literature, and life; appeal 
must be made to the religious instincts, and also to 
prudence, to common sense, and to honour. 

Thus the moral teaching in adolescence may be 
made to centre about three great general themes, 
which all together form the core of all morality: 



MORAL EDUCATION 175 

health, honour, and mastery or loyalty to life's task. 
Morality rests upon the first, health. All great hu- 
man moral achievement has been based upon it. 
Honour represents the attitude of loyalty to the in- 
terests of the race. In the normal youth it is spon- 
taneous and automatic. It can be appealed to uni- 
versally without argument, and can be made the basis 
of all teaching of altruism, sexual purity, and cour- 
age. Loyalty to task represents the latest and most 
complete virtue. Every person must do something 
which represents his whole personality, which is his 
deepest interest in life, the doing of which is his title 
to self-respect and place in the world. With this as a 
centre ideals of perfection and disinterested loyalty 
to task can be taught. 

Another field in which we still need far more light 
is the influence of youths upon one another. The 
power of the young to inspire and educate one another 
morally has not yet been fully understood, much less 
made use of in the work of secondary school and 
college. The athletic leader, especially, is a great 
power for good or evil — as are all who excel in those 
things which youths strive for and admire. The 
young appeal to and listen to one another as they do 
not to adults. Literature written by the adolescent has 
a place of its own also in moral training, but this has 
not yet been sufficiently recognised. 

Training in social morality is one of the deepest 
problems of education. Service is now the greatest 
word in the educational world. The individual is 
an end in himself only in so far as he is a means of 



176 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

helping others. There is a change of view, even in 
religion and theology, for the older theism now tends 
to give way to a new humanism; and in the school 
one of the most hopeful signs is the great interest that 
is being taken in teaching the simple duties of civic 
virtue. This is a hard lesson, and to teach it well, 
we must begin early and teach late. 

Our own country presents peculiar moral problems, 
on account of our mixed population, and the evils of 
immigration, which has moral effects upon both the 
immigrant and the native. The immigrant suddenly 
finds himself cut off from all the balancing tradi- 
tions of an old life, and without the steadying influ- 
ence of the new. This is a situation which we have 
but lately perceived, and which we have attacked in 
the right way by our increasing effort to conserve all 
the household arts, industries, family customs, tales, 
dances, modes of life and dress of the foreign ele- 
ments in our midst. We should go still further and 
teach these things to native children in order that 
they may have bonds of sympathy with the new ele- 
ments of our national life. 

There is much need of co-operation between the 
home, the school, and the law in doing preventive work 
in the school, and in teaching the principles of good 
government and obedience to law. There should be 
talks on law and justice, in the schools, by represen- 
tatives of the law, presenting directly and vividly to 
the child its problems from the point of view of 
its administrators ; for there is no better way of bring- 
ing out, in the mind of the child, the sense of jus- 



MORAL EDUCATION 177 

tice, which is naturally strong in him, and which is 
the foundation of all the social virtues. We must 
not emphasise too much the elements of kindness, 
mercy, and indulgence. It is easy and lazy to forgive 
everything, but to act justly requires far higher quali- 
ties of both intellect and will. 

The centre of civic education is the betterment of 
the group spirit. We must rectify and broaden this, 
and, above all, prevent its degeneration. The boy 
gangs are the breeders of about every form of social 
and political corruption. It is not enough to teach 
merely how we are governed; the school is itself a 
community, and the first duty is to fellow pupils and 
to home. Children should know something about all 
the societies that have been created to help them. 
We should make the most of all memorial days. So- 
cial and charitable institutions should be visited. At 
present the life of the community does not sufficiently 
penetrate the school. Teaching patriotism makes 
wide demands upon all our resources, for it is as 
difficult as it is important. All possible lessons must 
be drawn from the flag: its songs, its salutes, its his- 
tory. There should be instruction in the ideals of the 
peace movement, yet remembering the heroes of war. 
In the high school the emphasis should be upon the 
study of government, especially the national. This 
is the time, too, to emphasise the work of good gov- 
ernment leagues, civic clubs, the ethics of taxation, 
obligations and responsibilities of wealth, duties of 
the ballot, public works, arbitration, conservation, 
public lands, administration, basic principles of thrift ; 



178 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

personal, domestic, city, and national economy. The 
high school pupil should hear about all sorts of public 
affairs. 

Self government in schools is a problem of much 
importance. The prevailing tendency seems to be 
in the direction of the over-socialisation of the young. 
We must not, at all events, try to carry self-gov- 
ernment too far, for it violates principles of natural 
growth. It limits individual adjustment to conditions, 
and it minimizes that most powerful motive, the at- 
tachment of the young to the authority of the adult. 
The loyalty to persons, it must be known, is the 
very foundation of the civic virtues. Therefore the 
danger of loss of the spirit of docility and obedience, 
and of encouraging precocity in social relations, must 
be guarded against in self-government. For the 
child, before adolescence, there must not be too much 
of this mature motive. In the treatment of boys, es- 
pecially, there must be ample scope for command and 
obedience. 

Though the problems of criminality belong to a 
special science, a comprehensive theory of education 
must throw light upon them, and an adequate moral 
training must cope with incipient crime and abnor- 
mality. Moreover crime and virtue, the normal and 
the abnormal, are not distinct and mutually exclusive 
classes. In everyone, especially at adolescence, there 
is inclination to crime, and crime and virtue often 
hang in the balance. The great crimes, too, demand 
qualities akin to virtue. Our laws and conventions 
do not necessarily draw the exact dividing line be- 



MORAL EDUCATION 179 

tween the abnormal and the normal, for many laws 
deal with matters of expediency and convention. Be- 
sides, the legal boundary of our privileges is con- 
stantly changing; what was once forbidden is now 
allowed. Where growth is full and normal there is 
always strong impulse, often toward the forbidden. 
These faults of strength must not be confused with 
the faults of degeneration and atavism. And the latter 
must not be confused with the temporary impulses 
from uncontrolled rudimentary organs which flourish 
for a time, and then disappear. Many faults of the 
youth and adolescent must be attributed to strength 
of normal impulse and activity of the rudimentary 
forces due to adolescent upheaval of the instincts. 
Thus must be interpreted much of the teasing, lying, 
and cruelty of youth, and habits of anger, which is 
normally strong in the effective life, but which may 
readily become abnormally developed. 

Both the school, in preventing crime, and the crim- 
inological institution, in punishing and correcting it, 
fail to reach the depths of the problem, as opened up 
by the genetic theory. The school, certainly, is 
greatly wanting in its control of the moral life. The 
moral power of its intellectual culture has greatly been 
over-estimated. Crime is not necessarily dissipated 
by knowledge. The school fails to educate the in- 
stincts of the child as it should, and so is inadequate 
to cope with criminality which is a product of the 
instinctive life. Criminal youth are more individual- 
ised than the normal. Virtue is more uniform and 
monotonous than sin; therefore the school, which is 



180 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

but little adapted to deal in any way with the ex- 
ceptional trait or individual, fails to reach the source 
of crime, which is individual and exceptional. 

Acceptance of the genetic standpoints in consid- 
ering juvenile fault and crime, makes it impossible to 
base a penology upon the ideal of vengeance. In- 
stead of vengeance there must be treatment, the hos- 
pital must be substituted for the old type of prison, 
and the physician for the keeper. The keepers and 
correctors of juvenile criminals should be large-minded 
educators. They must be able to study the darkest 
criminality in connection with the virtues with which it 
is related ; they must bring to bear moral training, based 
upon the principles of normal development. Normal 
growth must be stimulated, and the innate forces 
brought to proper balance. Special attention must 
be given to the sense of justice which is the founda- 
tion of morality in boys. Truth-telling must be fos- 
tered by all the resources of normal pedagogy. The 
training of the money sense must be introduced as 
the best safeguard against theft. The life of the 
delinquent should be made more social, and in a 
better way than is now usually done. Sentences must 
be for the most part indeterminate, completed when 
normal balance has been restored. Punishment must be 
meted out sparingly to adolescents, especially to those 
who are detected in slight departures from rectitude 
and law. 

References.— 16, i8, 46, 134, 137, 196, 231, 254, 258, 266, 267, 
272, E. P. 



CHAPTER XII 

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 

The general educational aspects of the religious life 
can briefly be summarised thus : The function of re- 
ligion is to establish and unify in the individual the 
highest racial ideals. The individual repeats the 
moral and spiritual growth of the race, and only in 
a completed adolescent stage does he arrive at that 
state of devotion to the ideals, which, considered on its 
biological side, is a suppression of self, in the service 
of the race, and on the religious side is a state of 
conversion or service to God. A truly religious life 
is, therefore, the expression of normal complete de- 
velopment. In it the individual comes to a safe ma- 
turity, having passed through stages of danger of ar- 
rested development, of perversion of interests and of 
excessive self-interest. Religion must be regarded 
as the largest aspect of life, or its deepest meaning; 
and it must be called an inner growth an expression 
of fundamental instincts to be good, true, and normal. 
The religious teacher must be looked upon as an m- 
spirer of development in a broad sense, so broad that 
his aims cannot be separated from the function of 
any and all teaching, for everything that fosters de- 
velopment of the child's fundamental instincts and 

181 



182 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

emotions helps to lay the foundation of the religious 
life. Moreover, the course that ends in a normal re- 
ligious life is one naturally taken by all, if heredity 
be sound and environment natural. The religious 
teacher does not work against nature but with it. 
Religion has done its work in the world because it 
has rightly met the crying needs of human nature. 
To discover those needs at any stage of civilisation 
we must ask, What is the nature of childhood? What 
are its deeper interests and real capacities ? How must 
the child be trained in order to bring every power of 
mind and body to the fullest development? 

The great fact to be placed at the head of all method 
in religious training, as in every other department, is 
that the child repeats the history of the human race; 
that in his religious life, as in everything else, he must 
live one stage at a time, as completely and fully as 
possible. He cannot be (psychologically), a Christian 
until he has attained the degree of development neces- 
sary for that stage of life. The feeling of worship 
is first directed toward objects and persons of the 
immediate environment. The child's mother is his first 
deity. He passes through the stage of the fetich wor- 
shipper and of the worshipper of nature; his attitude 
toward his surroundings is precisely that expressed 
in the animism of primitive peoples. He is supersti- 
tious. These states must be accepted as natural roots 
of religion, and must not be suppressed as anti-reli- 
gious. Indeed a complete religious education would 
involve, not only making the best use of all such primi- 
tive moods, but giving the child a touch of the ele- 



RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 183 

ments of all religions. How completely each stage 
should be made to reappear in the child we do not 
yet know. Much depends upon the breadth of the 
mental endowment of the individual, and the vigour of 
his growth impulses, but the ideal is to make the child 
repeat the whole religious experience of the race. 
Freedom of growth must be the key-note of all early 
religious training. Teaching, therefore, must be in a 
sense negative and indirect. Adult modes of life, im- 
pressed upon the child, do greater harm in the religious 
life than in any other emotional sphere. 

Life in the country is the best of all foundations 
for a normal religious growth, because there the mind 
of the child is constantly nourished by the very ex- 
perience out of which the race produced its religion. 
Therefore he must linger long in this stage. All the 
mystic and mythic tendencies of the child, which de- 
velop under the inspiration of nature, must be al- 
lowed free range, understanding that the religious and 
the secular are not clearly differentiated in these early 
years, and must not be forced apart. Anything that 
stimulates the child's thoughts about the unseen world, 
which makes him believe that nature is alive and 
friendly, is truly religious teaching. Whatever fos- 
ters the sense of being at home in the universe, or 
in any way teaches the sense of the oneness of it 
is leading toward the desired end. If the child re- 
peats the history of the race, his conception of God 
must be a slow growth, an outcome of myth and fancy. 
It cannot be implanted in his mind all at once. He 
must first love the whole world. 



184 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

Formal religious instruction should begin at home 
with simple stories from the Bible and other sources, 
with very little emphasis upon the conventional reli- 
gious themes. This story-telling should increase with 
the age of the child, until it has covered all the im- 
portant scenes of religious history, and all the great 
themes of morals. The possibilities of this teaching 
for the child's moral and religious life are so great 
that it should be regarded as one of the most serious 
functions of the home. No other institution can take 
the place of the home as a teacher of these themes, 
and if the home life is not normal, the child's religion 
is sure to suffer. 

In all this early religious training there need be 
little instruction of the catechism type. We have made 
the great mistake, in the past, of making religion for 
the child too much a matter of the intellect. Such 
teaching loses contact with the true nature and needs 
of childhood. This is the same error as trying too 
early to base conduct upon intelligence. All such 
methods tend to make everything premature in the 
child, to force his mind away from the nature love and 
superstition, lingering in which, the mind may find 
true religion. 

Slowly, out of the nature worship, fancy, and poly- 
theism of the child comes a conception of God and 
of his nature as the author of inviolable law. Here 
again the over-zealous religious teacher may encour- 
age precocity, by trying to teach the child too early 
the conception of a loving, ministering personal God. 
This is the standpoint of the adult. For the child 



RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 185 

the stern, law-giving God, must be the object of wor- 
ship, and the final stage must be allowed to grow out 
of this naturally with the change of emotional life 
at puberty, rather than be taught to the child. 

The teaching of religion in the secular school is a 
difficult problem, and very important, for religion is 
so essential a part of life, and so intimately connected 
with every other function, that to neglect it, or to 
ignore it in teaching, is to leave out the most vital 
of all the elements of culture. It is certain now 
that the control of the religious organisation over the 
public school has gone forever, and that the school 
must undertake to teach religion. At present it can 
be said that the secularisation of the school has cast 
out religion, and that in doing this it has inevitably 
weakened morality, and hampered the teaching of mor- 
als, which is inseparable from religion. The result 
is that many children must now grow up in ignorance 
of the Bible, which is the greatest culture book ever 
written. The wide-spread view that morality can be 
taught without religion is wrong. The teaching of 
prudential morals, all secular ethics, all that makes 
conduct centre about obligation, good though these 
are, do not touch the vital spot of morality, which is 
rooted in religion. Children must have a sense of 
God as a giver of laws, whose demand is right be- 
cause he wills it; and certainly at adolescence, there 
must be religion to guide the moral life, if at no 
other time. The only method now open to the school, 
to preserve the good of the old religious teaching, 
without sacrificing secular ideals of education, is to 



186 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

have religion taught in the school by clergymen, each 
teaching the children of his own denomination. Fail- 
ing this, religion as such is likely to be lost entirely 
from the school, and to be replaced by the inadequate 
method of moral teaching, depending upon literature 
and history for culture materials. 

If the Christian religion is to be taught at all, in 
the school, it should be presented with the same atten- 
tion to the nature of the child as is given in any other 
subject of the curriculum. Failure to do this has 
in the past robbed the child of the great good that 
can be gained from the literary study of the Bible. 
It has been taught unpedagogically, because of over- 
emphasis upon doctrine and, in general, upon the 
adult's interests. The recapitulatory principle may 
now correct this, and put the teaching of the Bible 
upon a new basis, for it leaves little doubt about the 
order and manner in which it should be taught. Be- 
fore adolescence, the child is morally in the stage of 
external authority, when, indeed, all his interests tend 
to be objective. For this period and interest, the re- 
ligion of the Old Testament is precisely adapted. Its 
stories appeal strongly to the child's mind. Its heroic 
themes, its tales of wonder, battle, law and punishment, 
its vividness in expression of all the elemental passions, 
reach the child's heart. 

In teaching the Bible, much depends upon the point 
of view taken. We should not emphasise its literal 
inspiration. To do this may make children distrust- 
ful of the parents' sincerity. It takes away the nat- 
uralness, and leads to casuistry, as always in trying 



RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 187 

to teach as dogma that which should be presented as 
literature. The supernatural must be made to appeal 
directly to the feelings, and to urge it against intel- 
lectual doubts is a wrong method, for it encourages 
two standards of truth, and prejudices the mind against 
much that, if presented in the natural way, will be 
accepted without question or doubt. The value of 
story-telling which is a great aid in the teaching of 
religion, consists in that it organises the mind into a 
unity, and presents its materials as dramatic wholes, 
and so helps to overcome doubt and circumvent argu- 
ment and question. 

The Bible should be supplemented at some points 
by selections from other religions, and perhaps ought 
to be preceded by more primitive religious stories. 
Classic and Hindu mythology and the bibles of other 
religions contain many themes suited to the early 
stages of religious development, that are not sufficiently 
represented in our Bible to fully satisfy the genetic 
principle. Christianity grew out of other forms of 
religion, which in part still remain, or are paralleled in 
the religions of to-day. Sympathetic study of all these 
lower forms of faith is needed, for the purpose of 
bringing their culture to the service of the Christian 
child. 

Later, at adolescence, the New Testament is cer- 
tainly the best possible basis of all religious teaching. 
It contains the story of the new civilisation, which is 
the outgrowth of the altruistic motive, and expresses 
the new and larger life into which the youth has now 
come. It is the story of perfect manhood, an aspect 



188 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

of the New Testament narrative that is often too 
much subordinated in the effort to present the super- 
natural. The genetic order requires that the human 
side of the life of Christ be taught first, for it is that 
which is best fitted to expand the emotional life, and 
establish ideals. The more philosophic parts of the 
story, containing the doctrines of the divinity of 
Christ and his relations to God are best suited to the 
later, more intellectual periods of adolescence. The 
greatest fault of religious teaching during the adoles- 
cent period has been the failure to understand the na- 
ture and needs of youth. This is shown especially in 
the manner in which conversion has often been forced 
upon the child, both by church and home, with no 
regard for the nature of the process and change that it 
involves. The intellect has been encouraged to ac- 
cept beliefs which are meaningless without the sup- 
port of the feelings that can come only with a late 
stage of development. Such forcing prevents natural 
growth and leaves the religious life incomplete, thus 
defeating its own ends. It is difficult for the youth 
to pass through this change to the higher religion 
of altruism and to reach the final complete stage, as 
is indicated by the frequency with which we find 
juvenile conceptions and sentiments in adult religious 
belief. Religion must be conceived broadly, if the 
youth is not to be stunted in his growth, and every 
natural resource of the mind must be made use of. All 
tendencies toward doubt and excessive reflection dur- 
ing these critical years must be turned to belief. The 
critical attitude must not be fostered. We must have 



RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 189 

a broader knowledge of religious cults in order to 
have at command sufficient resources to meet the needs 
of the adolescent. Especially we must make all pos- 
sible use of the feelings for nature, for our present 
indoor religious life is unnatural to youth. The serv- 
ices appeal too much to the intellect, and too little to 
the feelings. Could we but turn into the religious life 
all the powers to be found in nature-love, which is 
so deep at adolescence, we could broaden and deepen 
the religious life far more than we yet understand. 

For the more mature and academic youth, also, we 
need a better religious instruction, based upon psy- 
chology. Especially is there needed a better way of 
teaching the life of Christ in its higher meaning. He 
should be made to appeal as a culmination of the 
struggle of the race toward a higher life, the type 
of the man who is to be, and the revealer of all the 
best ideals of the race. The aim must be, in all of 
the intellectual teaching of religion, to lead the mind 
of the youth away from criticism to positive attitudes. 
We must prepare for the coming of the inevitable 
periods of doubt by laying a foundation of belief in 
all the great verities that cannot be shaken : a founda- 
tion broad enough to keep pace with intellectual growth 
in other spheres of thought. The Bible must be sub- 
jected to the same principles of study as any other 
ethnic literature. The youth must be taught to ap- 
proach the study of the Bible with honesty of mind. 
He must learn that all the great religious themes are 
found in many great religions, and that truth is broad. 
In this way, the attitude may become constructive, and 



190 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

not destructive, as is the case if the mind be allowed 
to become fixed in a single point of view. 

Another need of academic youth is a better reli- 
gious philosophy, which shall be founded upon en- 
quiry into human nature. We should care less to ex- 
amine and prove logically the truth of religious dog- 
mas, than to understand the nature of the religious 
feelings. Judged in this way the truths of religion 
will bear all the scrutiny that can be directed upon 
them, and only good can come from criticism. For 
here the deepest justification of everything religious 
lies. What youth needs most will assuredly be found 
to be true, in the deepest sense in which truth can 
mean anything to us, and from this standpoint in re- 
gard to values, the philosophy of religion must be 
taught. 

Among the problems of religious pedagogy one of 
the most interesting and important now at the front 
is the problem of Sunday. The relation of the ac- 
tivities of Sunday to those of the week- day must be 
studied both from a religious and a hygienic point of 
view. Investigations and experiments show that one 
day in seven for rest and change of activities is de- 
manded on physiological grounds. Studies of the 
habits of many people show that the Sunday must be 
recreational in a hygienic sense, and that one of the 
deepest reasons for the Sunday is to afford oppor- 
tunity to break away from the daily tasks and to take 
a wider look, backward, forward, and around. The 
demand is for a widening of the interests of life. To 



RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 191 

this end all innocent means of self-improvement should 
be allowed. All libraries, reading-rooms, museums and 
art galleries should be freely opened, and the purer 
forms of recreation should not be . prohibited. The 
best definition of Sunday from the secular point of 
view is that it should be a day of higher leisure, and 
freedom from slavery to the clock. We are passing 
away from a conception of Sunday as solely a day of 
worship, to a Sunday of higher recreation and rest. 

On this foundation of natural Sunday life, Chris- 
tianity has built a superstructure of worship. How 
to preserve it, and especially how to teach the child 
and youth to gain from the Sunday all it should give 
to life is a deep pedagogical problem, a problem not 
yet solved by the meagre provision of the church and 
Sunday school. It is necessary that the religious idea 
of Sunday combine with the secular in the interest of 
both religion and health. For the city child, there should 
be excursions to the country and to parks. All school 
yards and play grounds should be open at least during 
a part of the day, and some indoor activities and 
some plays and games should be allowed and taught. 
If the children's theatre deal only with religious and 
moral subjects it should be opened on Sunday. There 
should be walks, talks, and nature lessons, and col- 
lection of natural objects should be encouraged. There 
must be plenty of home instruction, stories told — in- 
deed all the intellectual and moral resources of the 
home must be brought to bear upon the problem of 
widening the religious horizon of the child. 

References. — 16, 22, 142, 148, 196, 231, 267, 270. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE TRAINING OF THE INTELLECT 

The education of the intellect, in a system of cul- 
ture based upon the principles of evolution, takes a 
place secondary to the training of the instincts and 
feelings, for the reason that the intellect must be re- 
garded as an outgrowth of the feelings, dependent upon 
them, and in a very true sense far less important to 
the individual. Education of the intellect, therefore, 
will be likely to derive all its principles from nature's 
way of maturing the young in their fundamental func- 
tions. 

The first principle of intellect-training is that the 
child must be allowed to follow, in the main, his 
native interests. These interests well up within the 
mind, as nascent stages of instinct, recapitulating, with 
many variations, the stages of racial history. Each 
interest has its day, and is transformed, or disappears, 
forming the nucleus for a stage higher. The work 
of education is to make the best possible use of these 
stages as they pass ; to feed the mind at the time when 
instinctive interest creates power of attention and 
assimilation. This is the true economy of learning. 
All culture material must be studied with reference to 
this principle. It must be selected according to the 

192 



THE TRAINING OF THE INTELLECT 193 

stage of development of the child, and not by the 
logical requirements of the adult's science. The child's 
method of intellectual growth is circuitous, and is 
likely to seem lawless and capricious to those who 
do not take into account the nature of the child's mind, 
and who, therefore, expect to find in it adult traits in 
diminished form. 

The child's mental activity is based upon play, in- 
terest, movement, and feeling; therefore his mental 
training must utilise in every possible way the mo- 
mentum of these dynamic states. The first require- 
ment of all culture material is that it be contentful and 
nutritious. It need not be precise nor exact in form, 
nor orderly according to adult devices, for the mind 
of the child can be trusted for the most part to arrange 
and utilise its knowledge, if it is continually nourished 
and kept active. 

The chief art of the teacher, therefore, during most 
of childhood and youth is to keep the mind of his 
pupil filled with the proper nourishment. This de- 
mands resources on the part of the teacher, a rich 
knowledge of the subject-matter of his sciences, as- 
similated to the form best suited to the child, and 
above all, ready to use spontaneously. The teacher 
must possess a power of free, vivid, and interesting ex- 
pression — ability which the great majority of teach- 
ers, as now trained, lack. 

Interest is the key-note of the training of the intel- 
lect. Interest represents genetic order. The individ- 
ual and the race progress according to the same laws 
of growth. Though our knowledge of genetic orders 



194 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

is still very imperfect, enough is already seen to allow 
us to adjust school subjects to the child's natural ways 
of learning. We can see, for example, that in the ear- 
liest years the culture material of the race, which has 
taken the form of myth and story, is the normal nour- 
ishment; that we must begin with the finished con- 
tent and the whole rather than with the minute analysis 
and examination of anything. We must come to each 
branch of study by the road the race has taken in 
acquiring an interest in it. If the race began with 
the poetic and mythopoeic aspects of nature, the child's 
place is there too, rather than with the principles of 
mechanics. The chief reason that so many subjects 
taught industriously in the schools give such dismal 
results is that in the exact mechanical way in which 
they are taught they violate the basic laws of mental 
growth, ignore the deep springs of natural interest 
of the child, and attempt to force a precocity of knowl- 
edge against which the instincts of the young, which 
are wiser and truer than their consciousness, happily 
revolt. Insistence upon logical order before its time, 
making havoc with the genetic order, is the greatest 
pedagogic sin against the intellect. Especially at ado- 
lescence is violence habitually done to the mind. We 
have not yet accepted the evidence in a practical way 
that the order of development unmistakably offers. 
We no longer deform the child's body, nor refuse to 
attend to its needs, but we insist upon distorting the 
mind by prematurely forcing it to take on the habits 
of the adult. We try to teach the child to know a 
few things well, when his nature rebels against it. 



THE TRAINING OF THE INTELLECT 195 

We wish him to study minute parts, when his mind 
craves wholes. All these things we should not do, if 
we were to accept the teachings of genetic psychology, 
and examine the stages in the child's growth, and fit 
instruction to their needs. 

Many problems confront the teacher and investi- 
gator which must be solved before we shall have en- 
tirely satisfactory application of the knowledge of 
nascent stages to the education of the intellect. We 
must know by what means and to what degree to 
stimulate each part or function in its stage of most 
and of least rapid growth ; how to apply our training 
to the problems of the individual, whether to put most 
emphasis upon those functions in which the child ex- 
cels or those in which he is most deficient. It must 
be a part of the teacher's work also to explore the 
mind of each child in school in order to discover pre- 
cisely what the mental condition is — what content the 
child has brought to school, the stage of growth 
through which he is passing, and the condition of his 
interests. For upon the basis of such information 
alone can the school proceed to build rationally. In- 
tellectual education must always move upon a wave of 
interest. The teacher should always keep in mind, too, 
the close relation between the motor and the intel- 
lectual elements in the child's nature; he must see 
that the mind is best reached through active inter- 
est; that training in motor habits forms the best 
means of systematising and fixing knowledge in the 
mind; that in fact, knowledge which does not thus 
become naturally co-ordinated in the child's activities 



i 9 6 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

cannot be co-ordinated by any artifice and is for the 
most part useless and unnatural. Merely to know 
anything is of but slight if any value. 

The child's interest in nature and his power to as- 
similate the mythopceic is the main entrance to the 
intellectual training during the earlier years of school 
life. Many studies already made show the great un- 
worked field which lies here before the teacher. We 
little know as yet the extent to which this natural 
free play of the mind forms the child's method of 
self-education, nor how much it can be utilised in the 
school. The child's mind works freely whenever it 
is aroused by natural interest. This is true, both of 
his practical interests such as in animals and plants, 
and of the imaginative interests in more remote objects 
of nature. All can be utilised in the training of the 
mind. An excellent example is to be found in the 
child's interests in clouds which can serve as a type 
of mental action leading to poetic and artistic expres- 
sion. The moods and fancies suggested by the clouds 
have formed an important part in the development of 
the literature and art of the race, and they also un- 
derlie an intellectual movement in the child. It is 
along the lines of such powerful and spontaneous flow 
of thought that the intellect is best trained. 

Other interests in nature ; in sun, moon, light and 
darkness, frost and cold, and all similar themes of 
nature, can be employed in the work of the school. By 
them nature study can be made full of inspiration ; 
language can be cultivated, the poetic and artistic sense 
developed. The poetic, fanciful, and myth-making 



THE TRAINING OF THE INTELLECT 197 

stage is also a necessary step in the learning of science, 
if it is to be approached with a full momentum of in- 
terest — a truth often overlooked by those who wish 
the child to learn only that which is true for the senses 
and reason or is practical. The child must be en- 
couraged to revive the ancient view-points of the race. 
These are natural to him, and are spontaneously taken, 
if the mind be nourished by the proper materials. 
Failure to bring the mind of the child into contact with 
this rich intellectual material is like denying food to 
the growing body. The result is mental starvation, 
and the appearance of narrow and rigid beliefs and 
principles before their time. The racial interests are 
roots of the intellect. Without them the intellect has 
no depth. Philosophies and sciences become arid, but 
folklore and myth always remain. They express 
a common fund of belief and faith in all minds, and 
thus belong to a stage of life when the mind is most 
genetic and racial. All this indicates that the general 
and imaginative must be taught before the exact fact. 
Sun, moon, stars, rocks and trees must be made to 
seem alive and personal to the child, doing those things 
the child himself performs. Taught so, much that is 
barren in science can be made productive of growth 
in the child's mind. All subjects, indeed, which can 
be made to connect with such natural sources of in- 
terest, can be vivified. 

The heart and centre of formal intellectual educa- 
tion is cultivation of the use of the vernacular. This 
is the phyletic root of knowledge, and therefore must 
be made the basis of the child's growth. But in teach- 



198 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

ing the vernacular the culture material must be above 
all else contentful. There need be little reference to 
structure and form of language. Any method, in- 
deed, which takes the precious time of the develop- 
mental periods for barren disciplining when the mind 
needs to be kept full to overflowing, does an injury 
that cannot be repaired. It substitutes mere known 
facts for true knowledge, and at the same time inter- 
feres with the free growth of the innate interests. 
There is a time and place for formal training, but it 
must come when the mind is ripe for such interests, 
and memory is having its day. From the years of 
eight to twelve, when there is a lull in the develop- 
ment of innate interests, this kind of work has its 
best opportunity, but even then it must be wisely co- 
ordinated with other, more contentful work, suited to 
the needs of the age. 

The same principle holds in all training of the in- 
tellect, whether in the lower or the higher grade. The 
stage of growth, in its relation to racial development, 
and not the alluring simplicity and order of the logical 
divisions of subject-matter must be the guide. The 
school has been too eager to teach facts in systematic 
order, and has thereby failed to give the mind scope 
— and has not even succeeded in conveying the facts 
effectively; for what is learned out of relation to use 
and need is soon forgotten and is gone root and branch. 

When one seeks to apply the principle of natural 
interest to the details of intellect training, many op- 
portunities are found to employ the forces contained 
in the most commonplace activities and interests. 



THE TRAINING OF THE INTELLECT 199 

Very different indeed would be a curriculum based upon 
these native stages from that made for the child accord- 
ing to an order derived from logic. No interest of the 
child would be scorned, however trivial, if it could be 
used to teach him economically, or to lead him on to 
higher interests. If these interests were fully devel- 
oped, the work of the teacher would seem rather to 
be to domesticate an excess of mental action than to 
arouse interest in facts, to discipline the mind, or con- 
vey information. On the genetic basis, all free ac- 
tivities of the mind would be called valuable. In- 
accuracies of statement, and even such fancies and 
fallacies as come from an over-full mind would be 
passed over without reproof, for they would be in- 
dications of mental growth and educability ; and these, 
rather than precision of fact, would be counted nor- 
mal. 

The teacher must have a knowledge of the native in- 
terests of the child and understand how to use them. 
Though we do not as yet know fully the order of de- 
velopment of the interests, nor how they can be used 
to the greatest advantage, enough are clear as a result 
of investigations of the child's mind to show the prin- 
ciples involved. 

We have seen how such interests as collecting and 
doll play may be used in the school and home as edu- 
cative forces. We may generalise and say that all 
play activities and interests can be made practical in 
the same way. We must study them all in order to 
see how the momentum they contain may be carried 
over to the work of the school. Whenever this is done, 



200 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

the co-operation of the child's hereditary forces is 
secured; the intelligence and power of the race, we 
may say, are brought to bear upon the task of the 
individual. No artificial interest can equal this racial 
impulse, and we can maintain that whatever is learned 
without it has but a shallow root, and when the school, 
as is so often the case, antagonises the racial impulses, 
the work is done with great waste of energy. 

Illustrating still further the possibilities of motor 
interests in the education of the intellect, we can say 
that in all constructive plays there are ideal factors 
for mind building. Everything the child does in free 
play can be made the basis of knowledge. It is the 
organising purpose of play that gives it its right to 
claim superiority over methods of forced learning. 
In play the child expresses himself as a whole, with 
all his forces focussed upon a single result. The great 
difficulty in teaching is to give a variety of material 
without scattering interest, or making the child's mind 
merely a receptacle for facts. Play activities afford 
an opportunity, as nothing else can, of holding together 
variety in unity in a natural way, and at the same time 
making knowledge efferent; that is, centering it upon 
expression in motor form, thus leading in turn to new 
experience which is at once co-ordinated with the old. 

These aspects of play-motived intellectual train- 
ing lead to a general consideration of mental training 
by industrial and social co-operation. The child learns 
best in company, and by doing that in which he is 
naturally interested. If he can play a part as an indi- 
vidual in the organised activity of a group, ideal 



THE TRAINING OF THE INTELLECT 201 

conditions are secured for his mental growth. He is 
not then doing precisely as others do, but is taking 
part as an independent individual, yet interested in 
the activity of all the others. Thus the kind of 
knowledge he acquires is not only such as to bring 
out his hereditary forces and so to make his de- 
velopment normal, but it is the very knowledge that 
best forms the basis of higher culture, that stimulates 
the intellectual and moral life. And in addition to 
all that, it is in the highest degree practical. We have 
as yet made but little progress towards a truly so- 
cialised education; yet because social organisation is 
the most fundamental mode of human behaviour, and 
because all our knowledge that is worth acquiring is 
social in its intention and expression, it can readily 
be seen that the social idea is one of the most far 
reaching in education. Social learning is the economic 
way, for it is the child's natural and most intensely 
craved attitude in everything he does. So the social 
nature of the child must be used in every possible 
way ; he must be put into a social position in order to. 
be taught naturally and effectively. This has been 
done in the past to but a little extent. The tendency, 
indeed, has been in the opposite direction. The school 
has minimised the social elements, and has allowed 
the child to be natural only out-of-doors on the play- 
ground, where he has been allowed to make what use 
he can of social impulses without guidance. The ideal 
of the social education is co-operative learning. It is 
applicable to all departments, and all subjects. By it, 
too, the alienation of school from the interests of the 



202 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

home can be corrected. The school, socially organised, 
is made in the image of the home ; it is the home pro- 
jected, enlarged, and idealised. The teaching spirit 
becomes identical with the parental. 

The same spirit of learning by doing should guide 
the child in the home; and his home tasks should be- 
come a part of his mental training. In the home he 
should learn by service to the group. The teaching of 
the school should encourage appreciation of and interest 
in the home. Especially during vacations the children 
ought to be taken heartily into the interests and duties 
of the home. The effort to exempt children from the 
menial duties of the house, so often striven for by 
people of the lower and middle classes, is wrong. The 
home is the mother of the school, yet the tendency 
now is for the child to learn at school disrespect for 
the home and dislike of its duties. The school's great 
opportunity is to select the most educative elements 
in the home interest, and formulate them in such 
a way as to instruct and educate the mind, and to de- 
velop motor ability. Industrial education, considered 
as training of the intellect, should have a far wider 
scope in the school than now, for activity is the 
centre of all learning. Industry may be made to 
teach all school subjects. It is inseparable from geog- 
raphy, and a direct incentive to it, for all such work 
takes its origin in an interest in human activities. In 
the higher grades the same fundamental interests open 
up the whole industrial and financial organisation of 
society to intellectual interests. 

The social method can be used advantageously in 



THE TRAINING OF THE INTELLECT 203 

such work as nature study. Care of plants and flow- 
ers, bee-keeping, elementary nurseries, study and care 
of birds, insects and their economic aspects: all these 
can be made social problems of the school and the 
great force of the child's co-operative and competitive 
interests be brought to bear upon them. 

In connection with all language work the teacher 
needs to be reminded that language is a social function, 
as, indeed, is all thought. Language is learned natu- 
rally in the practical situation of every-day life. The 
same method must be carried on in the more formal 
instruction in language. Learning must progress under 
the spur of the social motive. 

Out of social interest, too, can be drawn, by natural 
steps, an interest in all the civic problems of the com- 
munity. Attention begins with organisation of the 
activities of the school, and widens to those of the com- 
munity. The mind of the child is easily led with in- 
telligent enthusiasm, from his own social problems, to 
the special departmental work of government; to the 
study of civic, hygienic and charitable institutions, and 
their methods ; and of departments of construction and 
protection in city and national government. 

The teacher should always be fully conscious of the 
real nature and purpose of the training of the intellect, 
and the reasons for imparting knowledge as such to 
the child. The primary purpose is to stimulate the 
growth of the child, and bring him to a normal ma- 
turity. Our race depends for its further progress, not 
upon the amount of knowledge in any form we can 
convey to the rising generation, but upon the success 



204 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

of our training in bringing it to a full physical and 
mental maturity. The method of imparting knowl- 
edge still so prevalent — the method of recitation, an- 
swer, and examination — is not an ideal way of accom- 
plishing this end. It is especially weak in training the 
mind in its true function as director of practical in- 
terests, and guide of feelings and instincts. It does 
not reach the moral life as it should. Criminologists 
justly complain that all this learning does not prevent 
the increase of crime. It is only by understanding the 
true connection between intellect and instinct and the 
principle of the nascent periods that a clue to the right 
education of the intellect can be found. If we fail 
to understand this, we fail to educate in the best 
sense. The child's mind is neither a blank nor an 
adult's in miniature, but is a growing organism, hav- 
ing its own inexorable laws of development, which 
must be followed, not contended against, in the educa- 
tion of the individual. 

References. — 16, 22, 33, 44, 46, 6i, 112, 116, 161, 168, 184, 
186, 196, 279. 



CHAPTER XIV 

EDUCATIONAL PERIODS 

From the laws of development already mentioned, 
and the maxims based upon them, a sketch of the 
educational eras of the life of the individual can be 
drawn, showing for each age — infancy, childhood, 
youth, and adolescence — the main principles about 
which the method and matter of teaching must revolve. 
The underlying fact beneath all is that although growth 
is a continuous process, with a single end and aim, each 
stage differs from the others and must be treated ac- 
cording to its own nature, and in a sense for itself. 
This is but to repeat the method of the race. No 
other course is normal nor possible. The adult can- 
not bring the child to maturity in any other way. He 
cannot impose upon nature a plan of his own and dic- 
tate the course the child must take ; but he must him- 
self follow, and educate according to the plan which 
nature has outlined and fixed. 

Infancy is a time for growth, and for sensory experi- 
ence. The child develops almost entirely by his own 
initiative. His chief educational requirements are for 
those things which make for health, and training in 
the most fundamental habits. There must be oppor- 
tunity for use of all the senses, especially sight and 

205 



206 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

touch, but there should be no forced experience, nor 
incitement to rapid development of functions. The 
most important work that can be done for later moral 
and practical life is training in the few habits essential 
to the stage of infancy, such as regularity of hours of 
sleep and feeding, being alone, learning not to cry. 
One must be content with the infant's natural modes 
of reaction, and must not try to see in his actions more 
than they contain. Those who, like the Froebelians, 
attribute to the infant the power to absorb or divine 
higher truths about God, order, and infinity, do vio- 
lence to the nature of the infant, and ignore the plain 
teachings of science. 

Gradually the purely sensory stage is passed, and 
the imagination becomes the centre of training. The 
moral need has not yet arisen, and except for discipline 
in correct habits of obedience and elementary morals, 
little emphasis should be put on conduct and what is 
done should be based upon simple, direct commands, 
and not upon teaching. Now for five years or more 
the chief educational need of the child is that his mind 
be provided with rich culture material stimulating to 
the imagination, and that he should be left free to 
work this out and express it in free play. The child 
must now live through the stage of myth-making and 
poetic fancy of the savage ; the receptive faculties must 
be steeped in nature lore, story, and those inventions 
of natural religion which the race has now outgrown, 
but which are suited to the child's needs. It is only 
in such a way that the mind, acted upon by the environ- 
ment, adds a stratum above the merely sensory plane, 



EDUCATIONAL PERIODS 207 

and begins to work in a larger field, both in time and 
space, than the senses can grasp. It is all-essential 
now that the child's world be made rich and full ; and, 
consequently it must be crude, unfinished, disjointed, 
and illogical. Fancy must roam free, thought must 
grapple with all the problems of the practical and ideal 
worlds, but there must be no forcing, nor strain after 
precise knowledge. 

Motion, like thought, must be coarse and free. It 
must be fundamental, using the large racial muscles 
rather than the finer accessory parts. Its one normal 
type is free play. The child's play during all these 
years of constructive imagination should be as little 
confined as his thoughts. He may be left to create his 
own world, to people it with his imagination. Social 
life is of much less moment to him than a few years 
later, and he is often content to play alone. He must 
not have too many toys and material aids to thought, 
for they do harm by cramping and focussing the atten- 
tion upon that which is near at hand. He must be 
left to find amusement for himself. The child who 
has been so reared that he needs constantly to be 
amused, and who has few spontaneous and keen de- 
sires, has been wrongly educated. Religious education 
should be natural like all the rest, and suited to the 
child's stage of growth. Instruction should be largely 
by stories; stories from the racially childish religions, 
from the Old Testament, a little of the new Testament 
centring about the child Jesus. But nothing formal, 
nor forced. 

So the principle of the child's education up to the 



208 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

time of eight is clear and simple. It consists in the 
rule to feed the mind with material suited to the age 
of the child; that is, determined largely by his own 
spontaneous interests — then to allow the mind itself 
to act upon this material, to work it over and adapt it 
in the play life, expressing it freely in the child's own 
way, or in ways psychologically equivalent to his own. 
In an ideal education, all formal work such as reading 
and writing — everything that cramps the imagination, 
or takes time from the more important work — would 
be delayed until after this first period of rapid absorp- 
tion is passed. All instruction would be personal and 
alive, and much dependence would be placed upon the 
child's power to comprehend truths, even the general 
and the remote from his experiences. Minute analysis 
would have no place ; it would not be necessary always 
to assist the child's mind by pictures, models, and ob- 
jects, for these can easily hamper the imagination. 
Little should be demanded of the child in the way of 
giving back information learned, for the mind can be 
trusted to retain with great tenacity whatever it can 
utilise, if the health be normal. 

From eight to twelve, the order is very different. 
Society demands that the child possess certain rudi- 
ments of learning, to acquire which demands drill, repe- 
tition, and close attention. Times when the innate 
forces are rapidly developing are not suited to such 
work, but nature has provided, from the years of eight 
to twelve, an ideal condition of mind and body and 
state of interests for acquiring once for all the formal 
learning required. The inner growth is now for a 



EDUCATIONAL PERIODS 209 

time slowed; there will never again be such suscepti- 
bility to drill and discipline, such plasticity to habit, 
or capacity for adjustment to external conditions. 
This is the age of all formal and mechanical training. 
Technique has its day. Reading, writing, drawing, 
manual training, music, foreign tongues, the manipula- 
tion of the number series, all kinds of skill, these have 
now their golden hour; but if the time be allowed to 
pass and they are not acquired in their natural season 
they will be attained later only with difficulty, at a loss 
of energy, and the certainty of imperfect result. 
Teaching now consists, especially, in imparting the re- 
quired knowledge and securing necessary skill, working 
as intensively, definitely, and with as little loss of time 
and energy as possible. To a certain extent, such 
training may now go against many native interests of 
the child, but drill and habituation are themselves nor- 
mally demanded for growth, and are necessary to make 
this stage of life complete. Moreover, the child him- 
self has a natural inclination now towards routine, 
definite learning, and precision of conduct. Interest in 
doing all things minutely and well takes the place in 
part of the more intense and special interests of earlier 
and later periods. 

The method of teaching should now be mechanical, 
repetitive, dogmatic, and authoritative. The powers 
of retention are at their greatest height, and they have 
greater capacity, by far, than we yet employ. We have 
much to learn in this particular from the schoolmasters 
of the past. The greatest possible stress, short periods, 
few hours, incessant insistence, incitement, little re- 



2IO GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

liance upon interest, reason, or work done without the 
presence of the teacher — these are the correct meth- 
ods in imparting the essentially formal elements of 
knowledge. 

Though drill, as has been seen, must have first place 
in the pre-pubertal years, all natural tendencies and 
nascent impulses must be given scope. Insistence upon 
precision must be far more constant than in the pre- 
ceding years, but there must not be over-precision 
where there is not yet enough inner control. Espe- 
cially in all matters of morals this must be borne in 
mind. While requirements and training in essentials 
should be strict, it must be remembered that this is not 
an age of fine sentiments and manners. The child is 
not yet altruistic. He is passing through a stage in 
which crude instincts must be given some scope. Con- 
duct can be controlled from without, and organised to 
good ends, but it cannot yet be expected to have the 
self-initiative that comes from moral ideals, as will be 
the case a little later. 

At the end of this last period of childhood, the school 
and home should have succeeded in giving the child 
something like the following equipment : He should 
be able to read and write well, know a few dozen 
books, and as many games. He should be well started 
in at least one foreign language, and in the ancient 
languages, if these are to be learned at all. He should 
know something about several industries, and be well 
skilled in making things in which he is interested. He 
must know much about nature in his own environment, 
be able to sing and draw, have a good acquaintance 



EDUCATIONAL PERIODS 211 

with literature suited to his age, and with the epochs 
and important persons of history. He should have 
memorised much more than is now customary in 
school. He should be a member of a few societies and 
school teams. To accomplish all this it is evident that 
the teacher of this age needs to be a person of many 
abilities and virtues. Above all there is required a 
leader, one who will not merely direct and tell how, 
but do. The teacher must be able to do many things, 
both mental and physical, that the child cannot. To 
hold the respect of the child he must be able to answer 
most of the questions suggested by the environment. 
He must understand games, and play them well, and 
must be able to mingle with his pupils without loss of 
self-respect. He must love out-of-doors, and he 
should be able to sing, play, and draw at least moder- 
ately well. Something he must do expertly in such a 
way as to command admiration. He must have good 
manners, a good disposition, sympathy, strong vitality, 
and love of life. 

At adolescence again the aspect of all education must 
radically change. Once more the need is for free play 
of interests, developing from within. Now, as in early 
childhood, comes a time when feeding the mind must 
take the first place, and all drill and discipline must 
be subordinated. Appeal must be made to enthusiasm 
and inspiration. The powers of appreciation and in- 
tuitive understanding must be depended upon, and too 
much must not be asked from the child in return. Ex- 
aminations have but little place. The method of teach- 
ing must be to present large conceptions, rather than 



212 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

details. The world must be taught as a whole, rather 
than in its minute parts. Quantity and enrichment are 
more to be desired than accuracy. The purpose must 
be to bring out the child's own interests and enthusi- 
asms, and so to nourish and lead them as to raise them 
to the highest possible level. Culture must be all-sided, 
and at every point the emotional life and the intel- 
lectual life must be kept in close contact with one 
another. 

Two periods, pedagogically significant, may be dis- 
tinguished in the course of adolescent development. 
The age of about eighteen or nineteen marks the divid- 
ing line. About this time the youth shows signs of a 
pause in physical development, representing, it is likely, 
the time when, in the race, the intellect began to have 
predominant survival value. 

The ideal of education during this first period is 
surely to fit for nothing in particular, but to extend the 
mind in all possible directions, and to the highest point 
of capacity on every side. The period of plasticity 
and variability must be prolonged in order to allow the 
many elements of the mind to struggle for supremacy. 
Everything that might cause arrest of development 
must be eliminated. The aim must be to allow this 
period of life, which is in so many ways different from 
all others, to have its full swing, as though it were to 
be the last stage. We must see, however, that in spite 
of the broad sweep of desire, at this time, the youth's 
point of view is essentially utilitarian. He does not 
yet wish knowledge for its own sake, but to satisfy his 
most immediate desires, emotions, and impulses. He 



EDUCATIONAL PERIODS 213 

wishes to be brought to the largest view, and to the 
frontier of every subject that appeals to him. The 
best ideal that can be held before him, as we have 
already seen, is that of colonial life, which combines 
physical, moral, and intellectual independence. So 
something more than instruction is to be made the 
inspiration of the pedagogy of this age. The work is 
to inspire the whole personality and to keep the child 
constantly in contact with the large ideas, and the 
fruitful and high ideals, of the life about him. To 
bring everything into touch with life, and to broaden 
interest and knowledge, must always be the aim. All 
the large truths of science must be presented, rather 
than exact and minute knowledge. The child must 
approach as the race has, by way of personal interest 
and need, rather than through a forced interest in the 
abstract aspects of science. All studies that are merely 
formal, which require drill and drudgery, such as lan- 
guages, must have a very subordinate place in the cur- 
riculum, for in dull drill valuable time is consumed, 
without adequate compensation in results gained. 
Complete and systematic knowledge has no place. 
Motor training must be of the same general type as 
the knowledge subjects. It must touch life, and be 
broadly industrial, rather than definitely vocational. 
It is especially important to arouse enthusiasm at this 
point, because of the power of motor interests to con- 
trol impulses, and to co-ordinate and centralise inter- 
ests. In play, the great lesson to be enforced is self- 
effacement for the benefit of the group, and the con- 
trol of conduct by the motives of honour. The new 



214 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

interest in contest and in self-improvement must be 
made use of in directing athletic interests, and into 
this the higher motives of religion and morality must 
be infused. Social organisation must not be neglected, 
and all such natural societies as debating clubs, liter- 
ary societies, and the like must be encouraged, for 
they bring out qualities that can be reached in no other 
way. 

The second period of adolescence is the time for 
developing the large intellectual enthusiasms. The 
danger is now great that the capacities of youth for 
the highest stage of growth may fail to be opened, 
and that enthusiasm will lag, and the organism settle 
down upon a low level. The chief effort now is to 
keep interest plastic and open — to be sure that growth 
continues. Now is the time, especially, to do every- 
thing possible to cultivate visions of ideal life, to allow 
mental excitement and enthusiasm to lead the intellect 
on to positive points of view, rather than to encourage 
it to dwell upon that which is merely critical. All 
problems must be kept open so that the mind will press 
on, and not close in upon truth prematurely. For 
these reasons education during these years must still 
be general rather than special. The effort must be 
still to prolong the period of maturity, to round out 
the mind in every part and function. Education is 
still for development, and not for results for imme- 
diate application, if the most complete intellectual 
growth is to be attained. 

This is the time when philosophy and religion per- 
form a function that is often mistaken. The youth 



EDUCATIONAL PERIODS 215 

now needs a philosophy which shall open the whole 
world to him, that shall bring him into contact with all 
the great principles of life and science, that shall treat 
the universe as real and objective. The philosophy 
of the college is too likely to approach from the sub- 
jective side, to lead to critical rather than broad and 
constructive thinking, and thus to give a sense of fin- 
ished understanding — which is the very opposite of 
what is desired. All the knowledge of the ado- 
lescent must lead outward, toward the active life, and 
must be a foundation for all later mental growth, not a 
finished way of judging all truth. Likewise in religion 
the youth needs a broad outlook, in order to prevent 
the narrow critical spirit which is otherwise sure to 
arise, if historical statements begin to be doubted at 
all. The student must be brought to see that the study 
of religion is the deepest of all sciences, that in re- 
ligion the whole meaning of life is expressed, in a form 
deeper than historical fact, dogma, or creed. Above 
all, the life of Christ must be made to appear the type 
of the highest adolescence, the expression of what the 
adolescent of the future may become. 

The social life still performs a part in education. 
The youth must act in a social group, if his enthusiasms 
are to be fully aroused and controlled. He must be 
a member of societies, for these furnish, in an in- 
tensive form, the conditions for development offered 
in a more general way by organised society at large. 
Especially ideals of chivalry and honour are fostered 
by membership in the group, loyalty is intensified, per- 
sonality is broadened and becomes more inclusive. He 



216 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

learns human nature, and is thus prepared for further 
social development. These social means of growth, 
instinctively pursued by the normal youth, by which 
he seeks to broaden and deepen his personality, must 
be considered and used in his education. Any intel- 
lectual training that does not have at its root social 
ideals, and that does not take advantage of social 
means of culture, will be likely to leave the youth self- 
centred, critical, and antagonistic in all his attitudes. 

References. — 105, 117, 196, 276. 



PART III 

THE SCHOOL SYSTEM 



CHAPTER XV 

THE SCHOOL SYSTEM 

In recent years new experiences and new insights 
from scientific studies have brought not only new 
hopes but new discontent to our educational thought. 
We see that the school is the most important institu- 
tion of a nation, and that by it the future of a nation 
is to be judged. Both the possibilities and the pressing 
needs of education have become clearer. We see that 
the school must be reorganised upon the basis of a 
new philosophy. 

In considering the reorganisation of a school system 
the first fact to be recognised is that organisation, the 
need of dealing with large numbers in a uniform way, 
always leads to degeneration along some lines. All 
systems of schools tend to decline, and teachers to de- 
teriorate in interest and ability, : ust in proportion as 
there is no infusion of new thought from without the 
system. To the extent that teachers are free from 
public criticism, and are secure in their positions, if 
there is no elective choice on the part of pupils, or 
other inducements to keep the school progressive, rou- 
tine is certain to become fixed and the school to de- 
generate. Therefore the first requirement of a good 
school system is that it be open to influences from 

219 



220 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

without, especially from the university, where thought 
is not hampered by tradition and system. 

The fault of system permeates every grade. The 
necessity of making one grade fit into another in a 
formal way limits the power of the school. The child 
is taught with reference to entrance into the next 
grade, rather than according to his needs. Grades are 
connected artificially, and are not well articulated, so 
that the result is a disconnectedness of learning. A 
great number of facts are taught, soon to be forgotten, 
for there is no continuity of interest. Methods of pro- 
motion are clumsy. In a word the needs of the school 
cause a progressive interference with the natural order 
of the child's development.. The trouble begins usu- 
ally at the top of the system in the college, where edu- 
cation is likely to be conceived according to the ideals 
of exact science, and to be logically devised rather 
than psychologically, as it ought to be; and in conse- 
quence the whole system is forced and constrained 
into unnatural efforts, the upper grade always dicta- 
ting to the lower the results it shall produce. 

Some of these difficulties would be overcome if 
there were a different method of distribution of teach- 
ers in the grades. In the lower grades the teacher 
should follow the child, in order that there may be 
greater continuity of effort and individual attention, 
and thus the great waste of teaching the formal studies 
by different methods in successive years be eliminated. 
In the later years there should be more teaching by 
special teachers in order to preserve the continuity of 
the subject, and to bring to bear special pedagogic skill. 



THE SCHOOL SYSTEM 221 

The departments should fit into one another, and 
work together in the sense that each grade should do 
the best possible for the child, with eye single to his 
needs at the time it controls him. The grade above 
must take the product, and utilise what has been done, 
but it must not dictate to the grade below according 
to its own standards. The greatest of all these diffi- 
culties is the complete misunderstanding between the 
common school and the university and the failure of 
the ideals of the one to harmonise with the ideals of 
the other. The common school feels the need of pre- 
paring the child for life, and the university tries to turn 
all currents toward the higher learning. 

Another difficulty, arising from an over-developed 
ideal of democracy, is the too great uniformity of treat- 
ment of pupils. It is believed that because all are born 
free and equal all must be treated alike. In the first 
place not all should go to school. Some children are 
unfitted by nature for education, and yet they are to 
be found in our schools trying to keep pace with the 
rest. There should be greater differentiation, and 
there should be special schools for those who need 
special treatment. Many, too, who are sent to the 
high school should not go beyond the grades, and many 
who may well profit from secondary education should 
not be sent to college. There should be greater differ- 
entiation of courses all along the line; schools must 
not try to cover the whole field. 

The whole subject of control of the school by the 
government needs revision. The method of control 
by large school boards is very ineffective and opens the 



'222 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

way for many evils that work great harm to the in- 
terests of the school. School boards do not surpass 
the average intelligence of the community, and they 
therefore tend to bring down to the average what 
should be the most ideal of all institutions. The 
schools are thus made subject to petty political inter- 
ests. School boards should consist of but few mem- 
bers, and the finances of the school should be sepa- 
rated from the city government. Superintendents 
should have greater power to elect teachers, to choose 
courses and text-books, and should have a longer 
tenure of office. The school ought to be more closely 
affiliated with the home, and there should be better 
contact between several kinds of organisation and the 
school ; such as the women's clubs, public school asso- 
ciations, civic and trade clubs, public library, depart- 
ments of hygiene, medical societies, and religious or- 
ganisations. All these can and must supplement the 
school, and must help to create a wider interest in 
education. Teachers ought to be informed about the 
greater pedagogy which these and other movements 
represent, and to be in touch with all the outside 
agencies that are trying to care for the child. All 
these educational organisations, including the school, 
ought to be co-ordinated into one comprehensive de- 
partment, with city, state, and national branches. We 
have not yet taken education seriously enough, for we 
have not only failed to see the larger relations of it, 
but we have allowed the school to remain but a minor 
part of public administration. 

The school should control more hours of the day, 



THE SCHOOL SYSTEM 223 

and more days of the year than now, and by making 
all its methods and its environments more hygienic it 
could do this without danger to health. The long idle 
vacation is bad, and especially in the city it leads to 
many evils. It is true that the school, as it is now 
conducted, takes the child from home and play too 
early, but the remedy for this is not to begin school 
later, but to change its methods. At present the first 
two years are likely to be almost wasted, for the school 
takes the child at an age when there is often weakness 
and ill-adjustment, shuts him up away from nature 
and free social life, prescribes a sedentary habit, forces 
him to use only his small muscles ; failing to see that 
all interests are now motor and demand free expres- 
sion. If, instead of emphasis upon learning the rudi- 
ments, the early years of school were made more nat- 
ural, hours could even be lengthened without detriment 
to health. The prevailing systems require both teacher 
and child to leave their best abilities behind, when 
they enter the schoolroom. Instead of this, all natural 
instincts should be given free and wide opportunity. 
The kindergarten ideals, rather than those of the 
higher grades, should dominate until the age of eight, 
and the time be devoted to filling the mind and culti- 
vating experience and expression. More work should 
be done out-of-doors. There should be more contact 
with industrial life, freer access to the country, more 
plays and games, and excursions. Everything must 
be made more vital and interesting and less mechan- 
ical. The school must bring into play all the powers 
of the child, and not exercise the memory alone. It 



224 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

must imitate the home in giving thought to the indi- 
vidual. It must look after the cultivation of habits, 
deportment, cleanliness, obedience. There must be 
more of the spirit of religion and more teaching of mo- 
rality. Examinations have little place, and promotion 
from one grade to another should come at any time, 
and in any subject in which the child shows sufficient 
progress. In a word, the school must change radically 
in the direction of naturalness. Yet it must not go 
too far in paternalism, and aim to relieve the home of 
its proper responsibilities. It must co-operate with 
the home in the right division of labour. There is a 
question whether the present tendency to relieve the 
home from the purchase of text-books and in other, 
ways to make smooth the path to the higher education 
may not make both the child and the public hold the 
school too cheaply, and so fail to profit by it and 
participate in its betterment as they ought. 

The most friendly critic must be convinced, even 
upon slight acquaintance with the school, that the 
standard of teaching, in America at least, is low. 
Less than half of our teachers have had professional 
training. Teaching is very often taken up, not as a 
life work, but as a stepping stone to some other occu- 
pation. So little is it regarded as a permanent profes- 
sion, in fact, that the average teaching life is not more 
than three years. Too little of the personality is put 
into the work. The teacher is far too likely to stop 
learning when he begins to teach. The work becomes 
a routine. Teachers are in demand, so that positions 
are relatively secure, and the teacher is protected from 



THE SCHOOL SYSTEM 225 

criticism. Until these conditions are remedied, it will 
help but little to raise the salaries of teachers, for this 
will not reach the vital point. Professional spirit 
must be created, and so long as schools are taught pre- 
dominantly by women, who do not intend to adopt 
teaching for a life work, and who therefore are un- 
willing to make serious professional preparation, this 
will be difficult. Add to this the prevalent political 
influences in the school system, and the dictation of 
text-books by commercial interests — and some of the 
chief obstacles to educational enlightenment will be 
understood. 

These conditions have resulted in low standards of 
discipline, a one-sided morality, and a lack of stimu- 
lation of the more manly interests and virtues. Lack 
of interest on the part of the teacher has favoured 
routine and monotonous work. The teacher depends 
upon the text, and loses contact with the subject that is 
taught. At the worst, teaching degenerates into a 
mere setting and hearing of lessons. The teacher tells 
the child what to do, and tests him to see whether he 
has done it ; so that the chief activity in the school- 
room is the giving back of information by the child. 
The school content is lacking in richness, and is frag- 
mentary and unrelated in the child's mind. Moreover, 
these faults are not confined to the grades but exist 
also in the high school and in the college. 

Improvement in this situation must come primarily, 
as has already been indicated, from improvement of 
the teacher — by awakening interest and professional 
spirit. There must be incessant stimulation of the 



226 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

teacher's mind from the progressive thought outside 
the school system. Teachers must keep in touch with 
one another in their social and professional life. They 
have too few incitements to self-education, far less than 
the other professions in which competition for the 
emoluments and prizes is keener. Pedagogical socie- 
ties, clubs and institutes are needed in every large com- 
munity. There should be central pedagogical libraries, 
with museums containing all sorts of suggestions and 
devices for teachers. There should be collections of 
lantern slides and pictures which may be passed from 
one school to another, as well as all the best text-books 
and supplementary books in every department. Gov- 
ernment reports, proceedings of congresses, and all 
the latest information in education should be readily 
accessible to all teachers. The teacher usually lacks 
sufficient knowledge of the nature of the child, and 
also is deficient as a student of the subject he teaches. 
In many respects the American teacher may well 
learn from his German fellow-worker. The standard 
of teaching is higher in Germany; there is more pro- 
fessional spirit among teachers, and as a class they 
are more respected. The difference is greatest in the 
extent to which the German teacher studies with and 
teaches the children who are under his care. He 
uses far less time in hearing lessons, and almost none 
in demanding silent study in school on the part of 
the pupil. The teacher's ideal is to have a mind 
charged full to overflowing with his subject, and to 
be a source, not merely of facts, but of interest and 
inspiration. Often teacher and class work together 



THE SCHOOL SYSTEM 227 

and in many cases there is no text-book for the pupil. 
Far more books are used by the teacher, and fewer by 
the pupil than here. The teacher first excites interest 
and curiosity and then aims to give the pupil soul- 
satisfying information and interest in further enquiry. 
There is much apparatus in the German schools; 
specimens, diagrams, pictures, and maps abound. 
The teacher is mentally active and alert during all his 
teaching hours, often walking about the room, closely 
in touch with his whole class. The minds of all are 
tense. In all these ways the German teacher may 
serve as a model. 

In recent years, it is true, we have gradually been 
awaking to new interests, and are already approach- 
ing better times. There has been more recognition 
of nature's mode of teaching. More attention has 
been given to the hygienic problems of the school. 
More scope has been given to natural interest. 
There is a tendency to provide more motor elements 
in many subjects. Gymnastic work, games of all kinds, 
field excursions, military drill, and manual training 
are moving forward. If this spirit is encouraged the 
future will see many changes. Nature study will in- 
crease and will at every point connect with out-of- 
door life, and will be made the foundation of all other 
scientific work. Language study will be richer in 
content, and language will be learned by expressing 
thoughts and experiences that are of interest to the 
child. There will be more oral methods of teach- 
ing, and the language work will come earlier. There 
will be more attention to the needs of each stage of 



228 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

development, and less of sharp division between 
grades. There will be more attention to individuals, 
more elective work, better means of discovering the 
natural lines of interest and ability in the individ- 
ual. The teacher will have a greater knowledge of 
the nature of the child. More attention will be given 
to the emotions, and relatively less to the intellect. 
In fact the test of the school of the future will be 
its efficiency in bringing these deeper functions to 
complete maturity, and not its success in imparting 
facts. 

References.— 28, 32, 53, 55, 86, 103, 133, 155, 159, 167, 247, 
249, 259, 274, 289. 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE VERNACULAR 

The teaching of English, and language work gen- 
erally, is proverbially difficult and unsatisfactory. 
There is truth in the claim that we are falling off in 
efficiency in teaching the vernacular, rather than im- 
proving; that even when the youth arrives at college 
his knowledge of his native tongue is still less than it 
should be, and is often absurdly deficient. The main 
cause of this defect is the unpedagogical manner in 
which language is taught, especially the sacrifice of 
content for form, thoroughness and precision, and the 
neglect of the child's natural interests in reading. 
Language analysis came late in the race, and should 
be late in the child. Language is not properly co- 
ordinated with other studies, but is made too much a 
thing apart, taught for its own sake. Too much de- 
pendence is placed upon the eye in learning language, 
and too little upon the ear, for such qualities as 
rhythm and other very important elements of the use 
of language are conveyed through the ear as they 
are not in any other way. Properly conceived and 
taught, the study of the vernacular outranks all other 
studies in importance; but it must be freed from 
the prevalent evils. There is in all stages too much 

229 



22p GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

precision, too much analysis and syntax, too much 
tendency toward what may be called a feminisa- 
tion of literature; selections for reading work are 
made which are below the intelligence of the child, 
and too much time is spent upon details. At some 
times in the child's development there is need of 
reading beyond experience; of skimming and rap- 
idly surveying many language forms; times when the 
receptive powers are very great, and the mind needs 
to be nourished, as it is not now usually by the school 
reading. 

Both reading and writing are usually taught too 
early. For countless centuries, in the race, language 
was all oral, and it should be so for the child during 
a longer period than is customary. Reading and 
writing, as processes, are artificial and uneducational in 
themselves. Therefore the less we appeal to con- 
sciousness and effort in acquiring them the better. By 
delaying them until precisely the time when the mind 
is best adapted to such drill, and working intensively, 
trusting much to the child's native powers of assimi- 
lation, they are learned much more readily and more 
perfectly, than when they are attempted earlier. Oral 
language methods are correct, for they put more work 
upon the memory, afford a more natural state of 
attention, and make use of rhythms and cadences 
which greatly assist the child in learning language. 
Methods of reading and writing cramp the attention 
to a narrow focus, take away the interest from the 
content, and put it upon the details of form. 

Writing especially is begun too early. It came late 



THE VERNACULAR 



231 



in the race, and should be deferred in the education of 
the child until there is opportunity and preparation for 
it. Writing should be preceded by much manual de- 
velopment. At first all movements must be large and 
free, but this stage of using the fundamental muscles 
must not be too far prolonged. In the early stages a 
model should be followed closely, and great care taken 
not to fix wrong habits which can seldom be entirely ef- 
faced. Gradually there should be allowance for in- 
dividuality, and therefore the vertical script cannot 
be recommended as a final stage, to which all must be 
brought. 

As to the methods of teaching reading, it is likely 
that too much stress has been put upon this. The 
best opinion now indicates that it should be delayed 
until about the third school year, and that then it 
can be taught with but little difficulty; that preceding 
it, language study, nature study, and other content 
subjects should be well advanced and so prepare a 
natural interest. The effort, so prevalent lately, to 
devise a perfectly scientific method of teaching read- 
ing seems to be unnecessarily making difficulties where 
there should be none. Individuals differ so that meth- 
ods that are best for one are relative failures for 
others ; and besides, learning to read is a complicated 
process, demanding several different functions, and 
there is need of appeal by several avenues and meth- 
ods. Moreover, teachers differ in their ability to 
teach one or another method, and each is likely 
to obtain the best results from the one most natural to 
him, or which he knows best. Many children will 



232 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

learn to read easily by almost any method, and the 
stated use of one does not at all prevent the use, on 
occasions, of any or all others. The main purpose 
is to read, and refinement of method is of little con- 
sequence. The natural place for the child to learn 
to read is in the home. When it comes as a natural 
effort to gratify interest or curiosity, there will be 
little need of method of any kind. The child may thus 
learn with almost no instruction. 

As to the school methods of teaching reading, the 
accumulated experience of teachers seems to indicate 
that at first objects should be presented to excite in- 
terest and furnish content to the mind. In general, 
there are more difficulties in methods that begin letter- 
wise than in those which begin with the word as a 
whole. The phonic method as best taught, especially 
in the analytic stage of dissecting out sounds from 
a wisely devised set of words, is a valuable addition 
to pedagogic devices. There should be but little use 
of primers, and all drill in spelling and in phonetics 
should be entirely separate from the actual reading. 

In the first reading there should be included some 
of the old nonsense jingles and rhymes, which are 
stimulating to the language sense, and are fascinating 
just because they have no definite meaning. The imi- 
tation of cries of animals, interjections, and such lan- 
guage forms as the original Mother Goose all have 
a great value in the early stages of learning language, 
for they enlarge the child's conception of speech and 
expression. The child is exceedingly susceptible to 
all such rhythms and plays of sound, and rightly used 



THE VERNACULAR 233 

they are educative far more than is usually recog- 
nised. 

After the child has mastered the first task of ac- 
tually learning to read, the real problem of reading 
begins. Now the question is, What shall be read? 
There is enough of the very best to occupy one for a 
lifetime; so we can assert, at the outset, that there 
need be no reading that is without value. Every- 
thing the child reads should be read because it adds 
something of value to his experience. The first prin- 
ciple is that quantity of the best reading should take 
precedence over form. Much reading suited to the 
stage of development of the child is the order, rather 
than close study of a limited amount, or attention 
focussed upon language itself. The meaning, rather 
than the words, must be the centre of interest. The 
best reading matter the language contains, adapted 
to the needs of the child, must be made accessible. 
We must not forget that the purpose of teaching read- 
ing, as of all other subjects, is in the first place, 
moral; that it should also be in touch with the great 
practical and industrial purposes of education — that 
is, must be an instrument of evolution and develop- 
ment, rather than a mere means of understanding the 
work that has been done in the past, or is being done 
at the present time. 

One of the most important of all the educational 
services of the near future is to re-write and re-edit, 
for the benefit of the child, all the world's great litera- 
tures, upon all themes suited to the child's stage of 
development, There are several types of literature 



234 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

and thought that must be brought to the child much 
more effectively than now. 

First, is the literature about animals. Love for ani- 
mal life is one of the closest affinities of the child, and 
its best literature can do a work for the mind which 
we as yet but little appreciate. Both domesticated 
and wild animals must thus be brought to the child. 
We need books about all of the domesticated ani- 
mals which play so large a part in the life of the child, 
describing their habits of life, their relations to man, 
their place in story and poetry. 

Another great need of childhood is for condensed 
and simplified stories of the great mythic cycles, epics, 
and classics, that arose and took form in the youth and 
childhood of all the dominant races. The soul of 
the child is nearer to these themes than to that 
which is nearest in time and place, for wherever the 
world is young there the child is at home. All the 
great stories of the world should be worked out one 
at a time, told and re-told to children, and then re- 
written and modified according to the child's interest, 
until each one is the most pedagogic form possible of 
the story and the truth which it tells. Children should 
early become acquainted with the story-roots and lead- 
ing themes of all the greatest and best literature in 
the world. Homer, Thucydides, Herodotus, the 
Nibelungenlied, the Arthuriad, Dante, Shakespeare, 
and many others should be adapted each to the age 
most suitable for greatest profit. All these stories, 
and all the old traditions, are charged with moral 
power, are stimulating to the mind, and aesthetically in- 



THE VERNACULAR 235 

spiring. In them is presented every type of human 
character, and every great ethical situation ; they may 
be made to fortify youth against temptation, and to aid 
in the formation of character. This literature should 
form the staple of school reading, and also of the 
supplementary reading of the child. There should be 
only one standard of merit ; that is, moral value. The 
aim must be to develop an active appreciation of 
good literature, and the habit of reading it rather 
than bad, for with this end all others are secured. 
There must not be too great a desire to make every- 
thing exactly intelligible to the child. There are truths 
that cannot be transferred immediately from mind to 
mind, but which can be implanted by suggestion, which 
can be felt if treated emotionally or aesthetically, and 
which may be grown up to later. All the best moral 
lessons come thus by indirection and suggestion. Not 
only should the best ethnic material be thus worked 
over for the child, but the national sources should 
also be put into story form. By this means a good 
strong use of English idiom can be made a habit, 
and it is one of the best means of inculcating patriot- 
ism. Reverence, self-respect, honesty, industry, con- 
tentment may be taught through our own national lit- 
erature and history. 

A third type of children's literature that is much 
needed is the story of savage and primitive life. We 
need many simple stories of how the races live, their 
relations to nature and to climate; how they hunt, 
play, weave, manufacture, cook, eat, sleep, fight; 
about their myths, religions, and ceremonies; their 



236 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

family and tribal organisations ; how they meet all the 
problems of life; what they think about sun, moon, 
stars, trees, animals, plants, fire, lightning, the clouds, 
the origin and end of man and all things. All these 
themes fit the mind of the child, at a certain stage, 
as no others do, and they stimulate thought and senti- 
ment, and lead on to higher stages of intellectual and 
moral life. 

We need, too, a Scripture anthology, and outlines 
of sacred history suited to the child. In this, as in all 
other history, persons, the dramatic element, the strong 
and exciting should have a prominent place. All his- 
tory should be searched for tales of great deeds, and 
accounts of great virtues, and be presented to the 
young child in the best form. 

In all this there must be, and will be, a wide range 
of words, and especially of styles. The only way to 
give children good vocabularies of words that they 
can truly understand is by such appeals to their most 
true sentiments and to the imagination. While it is 
not true that there is no profit where there is no 
pleasure, yet pleasure always increases the profit. 
The child's reading must be done enthusiastically along 
lines of his natural interests. Not accuracy and hard 
dry drill must come first, but general knowledge of 
content. Many literary gems should not be discussed 
at all, but should be firmly memorised. There is much 
that fits so well in sense and form that it must be 
absorbed precisely as it stands. Far more of this 
should be done than at present is attempted. 

All such reading takes the child out of the narrow 



THE VERNACULAR 237 

limits of individuality, and leads him to an appre- 
ciation of the life of the race. In all these early 
acquaintances with the literature of the race, the oral 
should be substituted as much as possible for the read 
story. The language training is thus made more ef- 
fective, and the moral influence of the story is greater. 
When a story is told it becomes a part of the person- 
ality of the teller and the word is reinforced in many 
ways which are lost when the book comes between the 
hearer and the teller, and much more when the child 
himself reads. 

If it is important that the child should have close 
acquaintance with a few of the great classics' of the 
race, it is almost as necessary that he should have a 
wider acquaintance with much more. Although a 
single work read and re-read until it becomes a part of 
the child, until its flavour is really caught and its con- 
tent absorbed, raises the level of the whole moral and 
mental character, the wider function of many books 
must not be overlooked. If the point of view taken 
here be correct, and reading for children be so impor- 
tant as it seems, one of the greatest culture movements 
in recent times is the invasion of the library upon the 
school. There are coming to be more and more at- 
tractions for the child in the public library, and in the 
higher grades more and more of the instruction is 
in the form of direction to the best reading. That there 
are some dangers in this method must be recognised. 
Reading is in itself an unhygienic activity of muscles ; 
it takes the child away from out-of-doors, and its in- 
terests; and to stimulate an interest in reading makes 



238 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

possible the cultivation of tastes for what is bad or 
worthless, as well as for the best. To a great extent 
teachers themselves are still in the dark about the best 
literature for children, and the needs of each age. 
Penally, in many departments of interest to children, 
good books do not yet exist. Yet the child must be 
allowed a free range among books. Merely to open 
and glance at books is a help. The child must acquire 
the habit of going to the best books on any subject. 
He must know that there are many grades of value, 
and must learn how to recognise the good. Until 
the child has acquired the habit of reading and ability 
to take pleasure in silent, cursory reading of good 
literature the school has not entirely performed its 
function. This is the index of capacity for culture. 
If such interests are cultivated, and the reading work 
is made natural, following, though not slavishly, the 
child's interests rather than imposing artificial inter- 
ests upon him, before the high school stage is en- 
tered upon the child should have an acquaintance with 
much of the best literature of the world. He should 
have learned all the great story themes, and if litera- 
ture is brought to him, edited not by the literary man, 
but by the best teachers who know how to adapt it 
to the child, much more can be done than is now ac- 
complished. Especially at adolescence, reading should 
have as its first aim to satisfy feeling. The function 
of literature is to pre-form moral choice, to help bring 
out all the possibilities of the soul, to raise interests 
to higher levels, to satisfy the craving for experience, 
and the longing for the ideal. 



THE VERNACULAR 239 

After interest in content is provided for, must come 
attention to form. The teacher of reading must not 
neglect grammatical drill, for this is one of the im- 
portant educational instrumentalities, and the basis of 
all exact study of language. What is most needed is 
syntax, and enough parsing and analysis to develop 
a sentence sense. 

Closely connected with this is the theme work. 
Bookish topics must be avoided, and the virtues chiefly 
to be sought in composition-writing are freshness, bold- 
ness, and originality, rather than fine finish. Themes 
for composition work, both for older and for younger 
pupils, must touch upon points of vital interest, must 
connect with the spontaneous expression of feeling and 
thought, and with the imagination. 

In the higher grades of the school, in high school 
and college, the same general points of view are to 
be applied as in the lower grades. Language training 
as a formal discipline must be made subordinate to 
the positive aspects of the subject, the acquisition of 
vocabulary, and the making of language a vehicle of 
thought. The moral value of literature, and its con- 
nection with all other subjects must be regarded. 
There are several causes of the present unsatisfactory 
condition of language subjects in the higher grades and 
in the high schools. First, is the excessive amount 
of time that is given to foreign languages. These 
interfere with the vernacular, in the formative periods, 
and induce a formal foreign cast of language. The 
second prolific cause of decay in language work is the 



240 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

subordination of content to the study of form. Gram- 
mar is placed before content and vocabulary, and time 
is devoted in excess to the reading minutely of a few 
masterpieces. Instead of that there should be much 
wider reading, with less thorough and precise inter- 
pretations, and with the attention less closely fixed 
upon the structure of style. Grammar and philology 
belong to the last stages of languages, and to intro- 
duce them in place of the natural social methods of 
acquiring language and interpretating its meaning, is 
highly unpedagogical. The over-consciousness of 
form and method is especially harmful during the 
early periods of adolescence, when free expression 
needs to be encouraged in every possible way, and 
when precision and propriety in speech are unnatural. 
Another source of insufficient results in language 
study in the higher grades is that language in the 
earlier periods has been received too much through 
the eye. In all the periods when the mind is most im- 
pressionable the spoken language is far more effective 
than the written word. The spoken word is akin to 
music. It has emotional effect, it conveys meanings 
that are not embodied in the printed form. So on 
the other hand, the substitution, as of late, of much 
writing for speech makes for a degeneration of the 
English work. The same principle is to be applied 
here as in reading. The habit of writing is a late 
acquirement of the race, and to bring it to the fore- 
ground in the developmental periods of the child is a 
violation of the natural order of growth. The child 
does not learn language by writing; his powers of 



THE VERNACULAR 241 

expression are curtailed and hampered by being bound 
to a written style which is never the same as the 
spoken language. 

A fourth cause of degeneration in the vernacular 
is the growing preponderance of concrete words over 
and against the higher elements of language which 
deal with concepts, with ideals, and with non-material 
things. Some of this is due to excessive use of the 
object lesson, which ties the mind down to material 
objects, and thus hinders the development of language. 
Instruction is more and more busied with parts rather 
than with wholes, with analysis and not synthesis, and 
all this is a hindrance to the higher forms of lan- 
guage. The mind becomes helpless without its object 
of sense. There is an increasing tyranny of things 
seen, and a neglect of the things unseen, of things far 
away in time and space. The words used are names 
for acts and objects of sense. There should be more 
training in the use of language that is symbolic, and 
not presentative ; which does not deal merely with con- 
tiguity in place and time, but that sees similarity, and 
requires abstraction and generalisation. Without this 
element in language higher mental growth is impossi- 
ble. Such a lack of the creative imagination is one 
of the greatest defects of our present generation of 
youth, and it is because thought is too much taken 
up with mere imagery and the concrete words which 
express this imagery. 

The text-book of English in the high school periods 
is usually very inadequate to the needs of this time 
of life. It is likely to be too formal, and it separates 



242 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

the study of language too much from other functions 
that should accompany it. Often the purpose of the 
English course is intentionally not to teach the youth 
to think, to formulate ideas, but merely to help him 
to express in correct form the ideas he already has. 

Such a method, which is the one prevailing to-day 
in the English departments of the high school, is all 
wrong, for it sacrifices content to form. The formal 
aspects of language study have their uses, but the 
mistake has been made quite universally of putting 
them into the central place in all work with the vernac- 
ular. 

At least a few improvements in the language work 
of the higher grades are clearly indicated by genetic 
studies of the psychology of youth. The greatest need 
is for some means of securing greater flexibility of 
both thought and expression. The two cannot be 
separated, and the attempt to do so accounts for 
much of the failure in teaching the vernacular. The 
English work should first be made a greater stimulant 
of thought and then of free expression of it. The 
youth needs to have his vocabulary widened; he must 
be encouraged to freedom of speech, to have less con- 
consciousness of the form in which his words are 
uttered. It is precisely at this point that the errors 
of the present methods of language teaching arise. 
The self -consciousness of the school-child is increased 
rather than diminished by the critical methods em- 
ployed. The self-conscious youth often fears to 
speak or write, because of the criticism of word or let- 
ter to which he is subjected. The other extreme would 



THE VERNACULAR 243 

be better; there might even be an encouragement of 
eccentricity and individuality of language, of slang 
even, if by these means the mental reaches are 
stretched. It is always true that what is new and 
vital in thought cannot be expressed in precise lan- 
guage, and to check the deepest thoughts of youth by 
grammatical rules is wrong in the extreme. 

For material of the English work in higher courses, 
there is a vast store, excellently suited to youth, but 
as yet little in hand. In the great national epics are 
just the stimulating themes most suited to bring out 
the thought and expression of the growing youth. 
Such material is ethical to the core, and the simple 
reading of it without study of content is educational 
to a high degree. In this literature colossal charac- 
ters that appeal to youth, and thrilling and dramatic 
incidents, will be found. The northern myths, es- 
pecially, which are more sublime, though less beautiful 
and finished than the southern, are the best of all 
food for youth, and the best material for work in 
the vernacular. Here are the beginnings of our mod- 
ern ideals of the gentleman, and of the spirit of chiv- 
alry and valour; here the moral and aesthetic are in 
close union; content prevails over form; and all is 
stimulating to sentiment, and appeals to it and not to 
the critical and analytic faculties. 

But interest in reading during the high school age 
should not be confined to the literary materials as 
such. Both boys and girls should read in the field 
of nature literature, and in modern science. In the 
middle teens the boy has a passion for frontier ques- 



244 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

tions of science, discovery, invention, and mechanics. 
All this is good material for developing language, and 
control of the vernacular. The youth must read far 
and wide, and must learn to have command of many 
books. The mind is susceptible to new interests and 
may be led along many ways, superficially, but with 
the effect of greatly broadening range of powers, both 
of thought and of expression. It is important to be 
able to use a library, to gain a slight acquaintance 
with many different styles of literature. There is a 
place for superficiality, as is not sufficiently recognised 
by the teacher of English. The wide-spread evil of 
novel reading on the part of young girls is due in 
part to the lack of substance in the English work of 
the school, which does not sufficiently satisfy senti- 
ment and a natural craving for experience. Boys are 
safer, when allowed freely to follow out their own 
interests in reading. They select literature that on the 
whole is more normal, and that inculcates manly vir- 
tue, the spirit of adventure, and practical interests. 
Literature that idealises crime is, however, one harm- 
ful variety which the boy is prone to select. 

Another great resource in language training is the 
drama. In the drama vivid feeling, action and lan- 
guage unite in a way most stimulating to thought, feel- 
ing and expression. Both passively, in witnessing the 
drama, and more in participating in dramatic action, 
the powers of expression are educated. 

Another resource in training in the vernacular at 
adolescence is discussion or debate. When the in- 
stinct of combat arises at early adolescence there is 



THE VERNACULAR 245 

often a passion for this form of self-expression, and 
its possibilities for education are very great. In de- 
bate, all the practical interests of the youth can be 
brought to a focus, and be made the centre of natural 
language development. The attention is drawn away 
from the language in itself, and is fixed upon content, 
as it should be. When there is something to say that 
expresses a deep interest, language will take care of 
itself ; expression may be rough and unconventional, 
but a foundation is thus laid, which later work in 
rhetoric can refine. Language thus created, and made 
practical and individual, is the normal product at this 
time, much more truly the possession of the youth, 
than language acquired by the formal theme. In such 
formal work the child copies, and does not create ; he 
imitates classic styles, which are foreign to his own 
interests, and which hamper expression. Whereas, in 
debate, individuality is expressed ; the youth finds him- 
self in a social situation in which he must create 
thoughts and express his own individuality in lan- 
guage, a situation in which feeling moulds style and 
shapes language from within. 

References. — 37, 149, 164, 170, 173, 196, 223, 262, 293, 294, 
E. P. 



CHAPTER XVII 

FOREIGN LANGUAGES 

The question of the teaching of foreign languages 
in the schools involves many considerations. The value 
of the subject must be regarded, the time best suited to 
its teaching, and the method. Certainly the golden 
period for beginning any foreign language is between 
the ages of eight and twelve; for then memory for 
words is best, the child is passive and plastic to drill, 
bears dull work best, and accent can be perfectly ac- 
quired. If languages are to be taught by the reading 
method, and especially if dead languages are to be 
learned, acquirement of the rudiments of grammar and 
vocabulary before adolescence sets in saves much un- 
pedagogic drill later, at a time when the youth is least 
of all fitted for it. Excessive study of languages, now 
almost universal in the high schools, takes time that 
should be devoted to content studies. 

At the present time, when we are threatened with 
a Latin invasion in the schools, the whole matter of the 
value of foreign languages and the question of the 
relative merits of the dead and the living languages 
must be taken up again. If Latin be a poor culture 
subject, the present state of affairs is unfortunate to 
the point of pathos. At the present time more chil- 

246 



FOREIGN LANGUAGES 247 

dren in the high schools take Latin than any other 
study except algebra, another formal discipline. 
About every science has declined in the high school. 
Even Greek is slowly dwindling, but Latin has now 
risen above the fifty per cent. mark. History is ad- 
vancing, though slowly, but has been passed by English 
literature, usually taught in a formal way. All this 
means that formal studies are taking precedence over 
content studies. Though it is true that more children 
begin the study of Latin than any other language, it 
is also true that more soon drop it altogether, and that 
it is the most prevalent cause of the early dropping 
out of the high school of great numbers, who find 
no interest in it. The same phenomenon presents 
itself in this case as in truancy, the cause of which 
is shown to be insufficient nutrition. The body be- 
comes restless and seeks a new habitat. So the mind, 
starved by formal studies, breaks away from the 
school and seeks more active stimulus. 

The claim of the Latinists is that the culture value 
of a language is increased by its being a dead lan- 
guage, that the mental discipline is increased by sepa- 
rating language from content, and that translating is 
highly educative. But the errors of this method are 
very many. The greatest of all is that the teaching 
of a dead language violates the principles of genetic 
psychology. It puts a formal, contentless study into 
the period when the youth most strongly craves nour- 
ishment of intellect and feeling. The Latin course 
is often negligent, both of moral and literary aspects 
of its culture material, and becomes a study of the 



248 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

structure of a language, a branch of philology, which 
has been one of the latest developments in the growth 
of sciences. The translation methods interfere with 
the natural growth of the vernacular, and that too at 
a time when it is most susceptible to stunting and 
narrowing influences. Instead of broadening the in- 
telligence by the possession of two languages, the ef- 
fect upon the youth is that his one language becomes 
a hybrid of classic and modern forms. From this 
he tends to break away into slang and other linguistic 
excesses, to satisfy a normal craving for self-expres- 
sion. The study of a dead language tends to cast 
interests in ancient models, so far as it arouses inter- 
est at all; and to encourage the youth to look back- 
ward upon a golden age in the past, rather than to- 
ward the future. The amateur student never rises 
to the point where he can think in his Latin, and his 
translation work is usually very imperfect. A lan- 
guage normally expresses a living reality; it is some- 
thing in which one thinks about living questions, but 
Latin can never perform such a function in the stu- 
dent's mind. It is, therefore, always a dead husk, 
and from its very nature, it must be. 

In our day only use-value is real ; knowledge must 
be definitely applied. There is no general ability that 
can be trained by certain subjects, and then, once de- 
veloped, be turned in any direction. Reason, imag- 
ination, memory and the rest are from first to last 
specialised by nature, and must be so by education. 
More and more American talent goes into business and 
politics, and we need more and more to know how 



FOREIGN LANGUAGES 249 

everything looks from living modern standpoints and 
to have the mind turned toward living problems of the 
present and future. In all these incitements, Latin 
fails. It is antiquated in content, and its methods are 
less advanced than those of any other subject of the 
curriculum. Some teachers seem almost to think that 
it is wrong pedagogy to try to make the subject in- 
trinsically interesting, but put all emphasis upon the 
training value of the work of patient translating. 

If ancient languages are to be taught at all, they 
should be brought up to the standards of modern 
pedagogy and psychology. It is likely that, when the 
pedagogy of these subjects is better understood, the 
study of all the great ancient classics will be begun in 
the mother tongue, and the study of the structure of 
the language will follow and not precede acquisition of 
a knowledge of the meaning of the language and the 
life that it expresses. In all work with foreign lan- 
guages there should first be cursory reading, with in- 
terest in the content, and not in the language itself. 
The novice should be read to, and with, by the teacher. 
The ordinary methods of use of the dictionary are 
most wasteful of time and energy. The student gets 
no inspiration from the content, and is likely soon to 
drop language study altogether because of its lack of 
natural contact with his active interests. 

Contrasted with the faults of the dead language, 
the modern language has many advantages. One is 
that it is readily acquired beyond the translation stage, 
and thus the child may actually have two languages, 
and think in both, rather than one mongrel language, 



250 



GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 



as he tends to have as a result of too much study of 
Greek and Latin. Only by actual command of the 
language to the point of free expression in it are the 
best results obtained. This is an open road to many 
intellectual outlooks. Nothing so arouses an interest 
in the activities and thought of a foreign people as 
a practical knowledge of their language. It is this 
kind of language work, done with practical motives, 
that is most needed, especially in our own linguistically 
isolated country. More attention should be given, 
therefore, during the periods of greatest capacity to 
learn languages, to the study of the live languages of 
foreign countries, and less to the classics. The method 
of oral instruction must always come first, and in- 
terest in content and use should take precedence over 
mere reading and the study of structure. As soon as 
possible the child should acquire a lively interest in 
the life of the people whose language he studies, both 
for the sake of his language study, and also to broaden 
his outlook upon experience. But even thus we fall 
short unless we teach a language to the point where 
it becomes a permanent possession that is constantly 
put to use. It is the aim of all language study to en- 
rich life, and it is never for the sake of the language 
alone, much less for the discipline of studying its 
form. Languages should be learned one at a time, and 
probably serious study of any ought not to be begun 
before the age of ten, and a second language perhaps 
only two years later. 

References. — 162, 170, 196, 250, 252, 255, 282, E. P. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

NATURAL SCIENCES 

The secret of the need and the method of all nat- 
ural sciences is to be found in the love of nature. We 
are in danger of forgetting this in our systematisation 
of courses, and overlook the fact that any teaching 
of science that takes away the natural love of na- 
ture, or that makes nature seem less near, is wrong. 
It is not an intellectual need alone that nature study 
fills, but an emotional want — a religious longing. 
Nature study must appeal to the practical interests of 
the child : it must be carried on in the closest relations to 
daily life at all times. In modern city life we have taken 
the child away from an environment in which he was 
largely his own nature teacher, and have put him 
under the influence of artificial conditions which lead 
the mind away from nature, prevent lingering in the 
stage of nature interest, and thus tend to ripen adult 
interests before their time. The function of nature 
study is to bring the child back again to the nature 
from which he has sprung, and with which he has 
more points of contact than we yet fully know. Na- 
ture study, thus conceived, is at once seen to be one 
of the corner stones of education. Science, art, liteiy 

251 



252 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

ature, and religion are the four chief branches of the 
curriculum, and every one of them has its origin in 
nature study. Therefore every department must have, 
as one of its purposes, the cultivation of a love for 
nature. This is the basis of all later interest, and it is 
useless to try to teach it in the higher grades if it 
has not been instilled into the mind in childhood. 

Appreciation of such a point of view as this is 
the explanation of the present return of interest to 
the nature subjects. Especially in the lower grades 
has the influence been felt, but changes are beginning to 
take place in high school, normal school, and college, 
in the direction of teaching in accordance with natural 
interest and the love of nature. The rapid multiplica- 
tion of nature books for children in recent years is one 
of the best evidences of the growth of the nature idea 
in education. 

In the teaching of nature to the child we must fol- 
low the order of steps through which the race has 
passed. Therefore it is certain that in the child's 
science the mythical and the practical, the general and 
theoretical, must come before the exact and pure 
science. For the young child, the two attitudes rep- 
resented by the mythical and the practical go side 
by side. During a number of years the child responds 
greatly to appeals to the practical side of his nature. 
He is a young utilitarian, and is interested in that 
with which he can do something. The active interest 
that can so easily be aroused through nature study 
can thus be made to mitigate the growing evils of con- 
finement, sedentary attitudes, and the institutionalis- 



NATURAL SCIENCES 253 

ing influences of the school, and bring into the work 
the spirit of free activity. 

Interest in living forms should always precede inter- 
est in inanimate nature. The deep instinctive love for 
animals and flowers, msut first be drawn upon. Inter- 
est in stars, in weather, seasons, rock-forms, and 
crystals comes later. The most promising of the as 
yet undeveloped fields of nature education is the study 
of animal life. Children, at certain stages of their 
development, are nearer to animals than to adults of 
their own kind. Heredity has stored up in the mind 
the capacity for unlimited response to the teaching of 
animal nature, if it be approached in a truly genetic 
order. The domesticating instinct, which has been 
stronger in woman than in man, is shared by the child, 
and upon this the work of nature study can rest. 

How little we have as yet appreciated the possibili- 
ties of nature study for the young child can be seen in 
our prevailing methods of the school. Geography, in 
its earliest stages, should be primarily a natural study 
of out-doors in the immediate environment, including 
human activities, and should lead from that to an inter- 
est in a wider nature and life. Instead of this, the 
geography, as represented by the text-book, treats of 
everything without coherence, ignoring for the most 
part the genetic stages and nascent periods of the 
child's interests. The all-inclusiveness of our Ameri- 
can geography, however, provided more coherence 
were given to it, would have its good features. Geog- 
raphy must be made a means of exciting interest in 
many subjects. To this end we need primers of the 



254 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

different sciences that are included in geography. 
There should be one, giving an epitome of astronomy, 
another telling the story of the earth — that is, an in- 
troduction to palaeontology and geology — with many 
illustrations of landscape, shores, mountains, rivers, 
deserts; with representations of mines and mining, 
erosions, and weather. We need also an introduction 
to botany, telling about the activities of man's fore- 
bears — about forestry, uses of woods, domestication 
of plants, the history of agriculture. Zoology for the 
grades should embody the view-points of natural his- 
tory, together with economic and other material. 
There should be texts concerning races and their modes 
of life; and the subject-matter of civics should be pre- 
sented in a way to teach the basic principles of active 
and intelligent citizenship. 

Maps, diagrams, and schematic illustrations, which 
take the child's mind away from natural objects, should 
be greatly reduced in number, and the geography text- 
book should be used as a book of reference rather 
than for close study. There should be collections of 
pictures, and as many natural means of representing 
nature to the eye as possible, but the centre of interest 
must be in actual out-of-door life. 

At adolescence comes a period of revived interest in 
nature, when the genetic order must be accepted as the 
basis of work. Again the mythical and practical, the 
general and theoretical must be kept in the foreground, 
and whatever is formal and exact made secondary. 
Pure science, or science for its own sake, is a late 
product of the race, and must come late in the life of 



NATURAL SCIENCES 255 

the child. To analyse and dissect and to study form 
minutely is a part of the last stage. First in the 
genetic order comes the mythical and the sentimental. 
Sun myths, moon myths, and folk-lore form an ideal 
introduction, and must precede all mechanical and 
scientific interpretation. Then comes the practical as- 
pect. Here the contact of nature with the daily life 
must be the theme. Nature must be studied alive in 
the field, rather than in the laboratory. Next comes 
the stage of utility, of the application of science to 
hygiene, to machinery, and to commerce and processes 
of manufacture. The child must learn how forces are 
made to serve man and to produce values. Last of all 
comes the pure science, science for its own sake, freed 
from all myth, genetic stage or utility, and with no 
motive but the love of truth. 

Both racial history and the study of the nature of 
youth direct that nature first be taught in a compre- 
hensive way, with much of the spirit of nature wor- 
ship. We must have an introduction to nature that 
touches lightly upon nearly all the greater themes and 
frontier hypotheses, syntheses which contain some- 
thing of the poetic and the ethnic, and which present 
to the mind the universe as a whole. 

Running through all these aspects of nature teaching 
is the one principle that the basis of teaching should 
be the principle of evolution itself. In biology the 
themes of heredity, variation, recapitulation, natural 
and artificial selection, the struggle for existence, de- 
velopment histories, lessons from palaeontology, — all 
such large themes — form the most practical science 



256 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

for the secondary school. So in all other sciences, the 
large and the general must precede the minute and the 
particular. 

Thus it is easily seen that the order of teaching 
science as commonly practised, especially in the second- 
ary school, does violence to the nature of the child. 
Science too often begins with classification, the learn- 
ing of Latin names, dissection, and analysis, when it 
should begin with the whole. There is too much of 
accurate observation and memory, too much drawing 
of forms, too much use of the microscope and the 
study of scientific formulas, which destroys all interest 
in real live nature. The point of view becomes that of 
the disinterested spectator rather than of the lover of 
and participator in, nature. It makes nature seem 
dead and far off, when it should be near and at every 
point full of life. There is too little of it that takes 
the child into the field with a wholesome interest in 
nature as a whole. 

The genetic point of view, which demands that the 
large and general be taught before the minute and 
particular, has already been illustrated in biology. It 
should pervade all methods in the teaching of sciences, 
not only of animate but inanimate nature. All studies 
of man must begin with his descent, his primitive modes 
of thought and feeling, the growth of his art, indus- 
tries, social life, culture; the development of science, 
morals, and religion. 

In physics, as now taught in the secondary school, 
the effect of the lack of the genetic view-point can be 
seen in the failure of even the best teaching and the 



NATURAL SCIENCES 257 

most expert planning of courses to excite interest, and 
in the steady decline of the subject throughout the 
country — and this in spite of the fact that physics is 
the foundation of all sciences of the higher education, 
and when rightly taught one of the richest in content 
of all subjects of the curriculum. The reason is that 
the method of attack does violence to the nature of 
adolescence. We try to make the high school boy do 
college work. We set him at work with details and 
mathematical formulas, when he should be brought 
face to face with nature. There is too much quanti- 
tative and minute work, too much mathematics and too 
little dynamics. He needs to know about fundamental 
forces and frontier questions. He has a passion for 
stories of the great men of science. He wants demon- 
strative experiments. In a word, he is in a stage of 
popular science. He is dominated, too, by a utilitarian 
instinct. There should be more application of the 
principles of science to things the boy is interested in, 
to the problems of his daily life. The work of science 
should be co-ordinated with other subjects and activi- 
ties of the school. Especially should there be connec- 
tion between the manual training and the physical sci- 
ence, so that the youth can make something practical 
and apply his science at the same time. There are 
many possible points of contact between the two sub- 
jects. The boy can be interested in making apparatus 
for experiments. Scientific devices used in magic can 
be produced. There may be glass working, making 
of thermometers, engines, machinery, tools : subjects 
which lead into the very centre of scientific principles. 



258 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

Photography may be included and should be taught 
both in its practical and scientific aspects. Many prin- 
ciples of physics can be conveyed also by such prac- 
tical work as book-making, rubber work, and other 
industries which arouse many motives and interests. 

Another weak point in the teaching of science in the 
secondary school, where the evolutionary view needs 
to be applied, is the botany course. This is the girl's 
best science. Her interest in plant lore, and in the cul- 
ture and care of plant life, is a strong incentive to 
deep scientific interest if the approach be wisely made. 
Too often botany begins and ends with collecting, ana- 
lysing, classifying, and learning Latin names ; a method 
that yields little of educational value and that detaches 
interest from live nature and its deepest problems. 
Whereas, rightly taught, there is no subject that equals 
botany in educational influence and benefit, especially 
for girls. 

The principles of genetic development indicate 
plainly the order in which interest in plants should be 
aroused. The first is the folk-lore stage, and on the 
practical side, the natural interest of the child in tend- 
ing growing things leads to definite interests. Both 
the imaginative and the practical motives must be 
drawn upon, and can readily be used in creating en- 
thusiasm for school work. This is the golden oppor- 
tunity, too, to lay wider conceptions of the spiritual 
through appreciation of life in nature — and at the 
same time to incite to activity in the real world, leading 
on to industrial and social interests. 

Scientific study of botany should begin with the 



NATURAL SCIENCES 259 

large problems, such as fertilisation, commencing with 
the relations of blossoms to insect life, and thus teach- 
ing the whole philosophy of sex in an objective way. 
The history of botany should be taught, and acquain- 
tance made with the great lives that have been devoted 
to the science. The development of its important 
themes and theories must be made known. Something, 
too, should be learned of plant lore, mythic plants, re- 
ligious aspects of plant life — and, on the other hand, 
of the practical problems involved; of the relation of 
plants to diseases, to the struggle for existence, to com- 
mercial and industrial life ; and all this should be made 
to keep pace with the theoretical knowledge. Minute 
laboratory work should have but a small place. There 
should be but little drawing of specimens, more should 
be taught without specimens at all. There is little 
place for experiment in the laboratory, for there is 
so much work to do in the field, in presenting nature 
as a whole and alive, that the minute parts need but 
little attention. Only by thus presenting the large and 
natural aspects can the proper relations between the 
emotional life and nature be maintained, which are 
so all-essential at the time of adolescence. 

References. — 107, 120, 151, 162, 166, 176, 196. 



CHAPTER XIX 

ELEMENTARY MATHEMATICS 

The mathematical sciences are often called deduc- 
tive, and because of this supposed method they have 
been given a distinguished place and value in the 
training of the mind. In this work, proof is regarded 
as first in importance, and the pupil is directed at every 
step to perceive logical and necessary connection. 
This view pervades most of our present teaching of 
mathematics, and yet it contains errors that may easily 
lead to a wrong conception, not only of the function 
of mathematics in education, but of the nature of 
the mathematical sciences themselves. As a matter 
of fact all branches of mathematics are, in their origin, 
purely inductive. It is just because induction, in these 
sciences, is so rapid and complete that we have a body 
of conclusions now so extensive that they can be ap- 
plied deductively. Their place in education rests upon 
understanding this. The child repeats the race — 
therefore, in his studies of numbers and quantities, 
his mind must be kept at first in intuitive rather than 
in logical attitudes. Proof, which actually came late 
in the development of the science of mathematics, must 
come late in the child. 

Number, as we experience it, as adults and prac- 
260 



ELEMENTARY MATHEMATICS 261 

tised mathematicians, is a complex idea and process, 
and to understand its genesis and place in the mind 
of the young child is not an easy matter. It lies at 
the root of temporal and spacial ideas. Temporally 
it represents successive strokes of attention, and so is 
rooted in all acts of discrimination and differentiation 
which divide and demarkate, and also have a tendency 
to group integers rhythmically. Much the same 
process goes on in space. Natural differentiation and 
grouping are the beginning of the interests that lead 
to manipulation of space and to the science of geom- 
etry. So the background of all our arithmetical and 
geometrical concepts is the primitive idea of succes- 
sion which has its beginnings in the simplest acts of 
attention. This leads finally to counting, but it is 
established long before there is any conscious idea 
of number. To this primitive series, the young child 
learns to attach names, but at first his counting is not 
a precise enumeration of external objects, and there 
may be much interest in the number series before 
counting as such is finally perfected. These native 
acts of becoming conscious of series and number are 
the basis of arithmetic. Arithmetic does not begin, 
therefore, as a rational process of treating numbers 
and quantities, but in automatic and habitual acts. 

Now the key-note of all work in arithmetic is the 
manipulation of this number series, using all its native 
roots, and following the order of the genetic steps. 
Thus considered, several aspects of arithmetic have 
had in the past a mistaken emphasis. There has been 
too much haste in acquiring processes and formal 



262 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

procedures. There has been too much written work. 
There has been too much haste in using large num- 
bers. Much of the practical and object lesson method 
has been unpsychological. Instead of this, all the 
work should at first be done with small numbers, 
without any attempt to separate rigidly one process 
from another; and the effort must be put upon in- 
creasing and directing the natural enthusiasm the 
child has for the number series, and upon showing its 
possibilities — to make the mind agile and alert to 
all the changes and manipulations of it. This work 
should be largely mental and oral, so as not to confine 
the child to what he can merely see and handle. Every- 
thing should be done in imagery, and not in abstract 
conceptions, and in this connection it may be said that 
we probably do not yet understand to what use the 
child's natural interests in number forms (which rep- 
resent his first attempts to correlate numbers with 
space) may be put. In this field of natural arithmetic, 
the manipulation of the number series, the powers of 
the child are sometimes astonishing, and the most 
possible must be made of them, for this is the founda- 
tion of all later mathematics. The aim should be 
to secure rapidity, alertness, and enthusiasm, working 
with high pressure, bringing all the mental powers to 
bear, and yet avoiding fatigue. In this kind of arith- 
metic the racial order is preserved. We keep close 
to primitive, intuitive methods of work, and avoid 
everything that is abstract and meaningless to the 
child. All the higher stages of arithmetic are here in- 
volved and practised, and all processes are equally 



ELEMENTARY MATHEMATICS 263 

easy in the use of small numbers. In counting up 
and down the scale in various ways, we can get all 
the processes: adding, subtracting, multiplying, di- 
viding, fractions, percentage, and all the other basal 
processes of arithmetic. The first work on paper 
should consist merely of writing out processes that 
have already been made familiar in the oral work with 
small numbers. 

Similarly, in making a beginning of geometry we 
must take care to enlist the native interests of the 
child in intuitive space study. All the natural 
geometrising interests must be made use of. We must 
cultivate the interests in sesthetical spacial design and 
groupings in order to excite mental activity, and must 
use these and other devices to stimulate the visual pow- 
ers, which are needed in both arithmetic and geometry. 
This is a racial step, preceding all definite, logical 
geometrising, and its cultivation can do much to pre- 
pare the mind for the later work. There is abundant 
evidence to show that among peoples far below the 
scale of those who possess even elementary geomet- 
rical conceptions, spacial manipulations in design and 
grouping have a fascination for the mind. This in- 
terest of the child should be stimulated by the use of 
charts in the schoolroom containing the Lay and other 
dot groupings, as well as magic squares, number puz- 
zles, and everything of the sort that can impress the 
child with the mystery and the magic of numbers and 
spacial relations. 

Not the least of aids in teaching mathematics are 
to be found outside text-books and conventional 



264 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

school methods, in sources of which the teacher 
usually knows but little. Many games are excellent 
for training the sense of number and geometrical 
relations. Dominoes and dice can be used in many 
ways for mathematical purposes. Geometrical interest 
is helped by construction work such as paper folding 
and cutting. Labyrinths, some games of solitaire, 
chess, puzzles, are all useful in this connection, as 
are many forms of simple apparatus and laboratory 
devices. Drawing, also, and figure tracing employ 
mathematical abilities. The study of models of snow- 
flakes and other crystals, mathematical tricks, and con- 
juring experiments, add to and broaden mathematical 
interest. All these appeal to native or phylogenetic 
roots, and so are economical means of developing in- 
terest in the child. 

All such facts and principles tend to show that, 
in the teaching of mathematics to young children, free 
mental activity must always be aimed at. There is 
more in the mind of the child than can be brought to 
definite expression in his daily life. Therefore the 
practical arithmetic has but a secondary place at 
first. But when the time does come for applied mathe- 
matics it should be taught intensively and be made a 
means of bringing the child into vital touch with actual 
business and industry. We should bring it into re- 
lation with carpentering, and with business methods 
such as banking and accounting. We should take 
from the practical mathematicians all they have to 
offer in the way of expert methods, short cuts, and 
all other devices, not letting a love of system stand 



ELEMENTARY MATHEMATICS 265 

in the way of plasticity and interest. The practical 
interest must now be made to dominate the work, just 
as the free expression of number interest did in the 
stage of manipulation of the series. In all this work, 
and in fact in all teaching of mathematics after the 
first three grades, there should be more specialisation 
on the part of teachers. In no other subject can 
so much time and energy be saved by expert teach- 
ing, by one who has a thorough understanding of 
mathematics as actually used in practical life. The 
presentation of mathematics as exact science, in which 
logical proof is the ideal, comes last of all, and must 
depend upon the stages that precede it. 

References. — E. P. 



CHAPTER XX 

HISTORY 

The most important item to be determined about 
any subject in the curriculum is why it is taught ; what 
the aim is, what it is expected to do for the child. 
History is so vast a subject, is so complex, approach- 
able from so many standpoints, and for so many pur- 
poses that it is especially necessary that the reasons 
for the presence of this subject in the school be 
clearly grasped. What is the function of history? 
Should it serve primarily to teach the laws of cause 
and effect in human affairs? Is the main purpose 
to teach how to study? Is it to teach to see events 
in temporal perspective, as products of growth and 
development? Or is the object more practical — to 
make intelligent citizens by inculcating lessons of duty 
to state and society; taking the standpoint that his- 
tory is past politics and making it principally a sub- 
ject for boys? Is the function of history to give a 
background for literature, science, or other studies? 
Is it to enlarge the horizon of the young, make them 
citizens of all times and climes? 

All these purposes which have from time to time 
been proposed, it can be claimed are partial. They 
are all important and vital ways of looking at the 
history problem, but they are not the whole nor the 

266 



HISTORY 267 

highest truth. The chief end and aim of history is 
to teach morality, to help to shape the natural good- 
ness of the child, to stimulate thought and interest in 
moral behaviour, to teach the infinite difference be- 
tween the good and the bad, between justice and injus- 
tice. Especially at adolescence this moral purpose of 
history should never be lost from sight. It should 
determine every choice, both of method and subject- 
matter, in the historical course. History should so 
impress intelligence and will as to inspire to the 
greatest degree ideals of social service and unselfish- 
ness. That is its true mission. 

To further such an end in history two radical 
changes are much needed in the schools. No subject 
is more inadequately represented, worse taught, nor 
so hampered by insufficient preparation and lack of 
breadth of knowledge on the part of the teacher. 

The greatest need is for special teachers of his- 
tory. The subject demands that the mind of the 
teacher be inspired with enthusiasm, be full to over- 
flowing with knowledge, have ready command of co- 
pious illustrations of its lessons, gained by wide and 
diligent reading and thoughtful interest in the work. 
Only thus, with inspiration and full command of the 
resources, can history be taught effectively to the 
young. The second need is that history work be 
extended over all the years of the school, be increased 
in amount, and be better adapted than now to each 
stage of development of the child. 

The beginning of history can be made, in the first 
years, by story telling. The love of the story is the 



268 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

beginning of the historical interest of the child. This 
work should be devoloped into a high art, and courses 
in story telling should be included in all normal 
schools. History for the young child should go back 
to its racial origin; to the myth, the folktale, and the 
fairy tale. Later, select stories from the Old Testa- 
ment can be made the centre of the historical work. 
These appeal with great force, at a certain stage, to 
the child's dramatic sense, to his love of battles and 
law. Selections may follow from the Odyssey, the 
Norse sagas, tales from Shakespeare, Herodotus, 
Livy, and Xenophon. These are all stimulating to the 
historical sense, and create interest, upon which, later, 
more exact historical work can be built. 

A second period for the romance of history comes 
in adolescence, during the middle teens. The history 
of that which happened nowhere, and which could 
have happened anywhere, is at a certain age the best 
to influence innate powers. History must suggest for 
all the power that makes for righteousness, which we 
can see at work in the progress of events from age to 
age; and once in a while the teacher must rise to the 
great argument that justifies the ways of heaven to 
man. The taste for old legends like those of St. 
George, Arthur and the Round Table, and the Grail 
has not weakened at sixteen, and these are now 
capable of taking on new meaning, and of being 
made the centres of interest in history and literature. 
These things now lie nearer the heart of the youth 
than the latest local history, for wherever the world 
is young, there the child is at home. Historical ma- 



HISTORY 269 

terial can now be used as one of the best aids to lit- 
erature and language. Much of the old literature 
needs but re-editing to be of the greatest service to 
youth in many ways. All that part of our literary 
possessions which has survived for long periods in 
the oral form is valuable to a greater extent than is 
now understood ; for in these tales the moral has been 
most fully expressed, and they appeal irresistibly to 
the innate and unformed morality of youth. Noth- 
ing is better for impressing upon the mind the infinite 
disparity between the good and the bad, the laws of 
right and wrong, of justice and injustice. A cycle 
of events grouped around a great ethical problem is 
interesting to youth, and nothing surpasses such ma- 
terial in power to meet the moral needs at a certain 
time of life when it is of the utmost importance to 
give the very best. 

The question of proper methods in teaching his- 
tory is a difficult and complex one. That history, in 
being taught, should pass through the stages in which 
it was lived, seems certain. One point is to be 
avoided, a fault usually found in the present method 
of teaching history. There should not be too much 
insistence upon historical unity and connectedness. 
Connectedness, completeness, and unity are not needed 
in the history work up to the time of college. Rather 
the striking, the impressive, that which may have the 
deepest moral effect, must be selected, and the dul- 
ness of sequences and causal chains avoided. The 
child must be impressed, affected, must absorb and 
imbibe, and there must not be too much learning of 



270 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

facts, nor training of the judgment and reason. There 
is too much lesson setting and hearing, too much ex- 
amination of the memory, which always makes learn- 
ing superficial. All these are faults due to the de- 
vices of poor teachers. The reason for this neces- 
sary evil is that the teacher is not richly enough 
equipped with materials to teach. He does too little 
teaching, and precious time is lost in hearing recita- 
tions which should be given to inspiring and sug- 
gesting. Another prevalent fault, in the teaching of 
history, is that the immediately practical application 
to politics, to business, and to the questions of the day 
are too much in mind. There are things in a republic 
higher than constitutions. History must be made to 
impart the power that makes for righteousness. It 
must touch and rouse the religious instinct and nor- 
malise the relations of the individual to the wider 
reaches of time and space, and fill his mind with 
thoughts of its meaning for his own life in its largest 
aspects. It must be taught with reference to the 
present and the future, and therefore history must 
sometimes be taught backwards as well as forwards, 
when by this means its lessons can be made more 
real. 

Such a conception of history demands much of the 
teacher. He must have strong resources and com- 
mand many methods and devices. There should be 
an abundance of material aids, in which the teacher 
must be thoroughly at home. There must be maps, 
charts, pictures, curves, tables, vital statistics ; and 
now the stereopticon and the motion picture must be 
considered in the teaching of history. There should not 



HISTORY 271 

be too much accuracy and detail in teaching, for this 
hampers the larger view, and the teacher need not be 
afraid of the charge of being unsystematic and super- 
ficial, if he can thus better convey his message. There 
are many methods, and no one is best. The teacher 
must adapt everything to his own needs. There should 
be much oral and narrative teaching, with a text-book 
used only as a basis. There must be collateral reading. 
In the high school stages there should be some use of 
the sources, much note-book making, dictation, and li- 
brary work. There should be but a limited use of the 
method of class discussion; for an excess of this, and 
of imitation town meetings, congresses, and the like 
tends to make pupils argumentative and superficial 
and to foster a disposition that is already too preva- 
lent in our schools and in our national character. 
The business of the student is to learn, and of the 
teacher to teach. History, moreover, is a story to be 
told, not a lesson to be crammed. Nor is it enough 
merely to impart knowledge in this richest of fields 
of learning. Here, as in almost no other subject, is 
it demanded of the teacher that he truly teach. Here 
his opportunity is the greatest, and his failure from 
ignorance, indifference, or a narrow conception of 
the needs of the child or youth is most complete. 
The difference, at the greatest, is between learning a 
few dates and facts, and having the mind filled with 
moral lessons and ideals which will remain as living 
forces throughout life, influencing conduct in fields 
very remote from all the lessons set or taught. 

References. — 26, 196, 224. 



CHAPTER XXI 

MUSIC AND DANCING 

When once the psychology of music has been 
brought to light, its important function in education 
cannot be ignored. Music, more than any other mode 
of expression, is the language of the feelings; and, 
therefore, musical culture is the most liberal and 
most humanistic of all studies, perhaps not ex- 
cepting even literature. There is need of an awak- 
ing to the possibilities of musical education, ec- 
pecially in America, for not only is the quality of 
our music, both in the school and elsewhere, very 
poor, but as a nation we lack sentiment, and are in 
danger of becoming arid in all our emotional life. 
Music adds new and brighter colours to experience. 
It frees us from false and bad feelings, gives us a fuller 
life, makes us expressive. It is, therefore, not for 
the few alone who have talent, but for all. All may 
at least appreciate music and partake of its educative 
effects. 

If we seek deeper explanations of the power of 
music, we can say that music is the expression of 
the mind of man that is larger and deeper than the con- 
sciousness of the individual. It comes from the generic 

272 



MUSIC AND DANCING 273 

and ancestral life, and appeals to the racial in us. The 
most fundamental quality of it is rhythm. The mind 
responds to rhythm because, from the very beginning of 
protoplasmic life, rhythms have played upon the senses 
and have been incorporated into the most basic physi- 
ological processes of the organism. The body has re- 
sponded to rhythm long before there was a sense of 
hearing. The function of music is to awaken in us 
the echoes of ancestral experience, and to stimulate to 
action the rudimentary organs of the mind. When we 
listen to music we experience what the race has done. 
Its loves and fears reverberate in our minds, deep down 
in the consciousness, whence they are incapable of be- 
ing brought to clear understanding. In our music we 
rehearse the joys and sorrows, victories, defeats, long- 
ings, exultations and depressions of those who have 
gone before us. And there stirs within us, too, the im- 
pulse to go beyond our present limitations to the future 
and the ideal. Thus in music we realise a broader 
life, both in the past and the future, than is contained 
within the conscious limits of our personality. Music 
is the most generic speech, for in it the mind par- 
ticipates in the whole meaning of the universe, as 
though it remembered the time before individuality 
was separated off from the whole. These are the 
reasons why music arouses every mood of which the 
human consciousness is capable, why it makes us feel 
that the world is lawful, and gives us a sense of free- 
dom as though we lived in a world in which nothing 
is impossible. This is the reason, too, why music so 



274 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

early awakens a response in the young child, and why 
nature scenes and moods are suggested by music in all 
responsive minds. 

If music be thus correctly interpreted, it is difficult 
to overestimate its importance, or to mistake the pur- 
pose it may serve in education, and the manner and 
spirit in which it must be taught. First of all music 
must be made to educate the feelings. To do this 
there must be acquaintance with much of the best 
music in the world, with always the main interest 
in the sentiment that is to be taught by the music. 
Knowledge about music, about technique, structure, 
significance of notes is of minor importance. There 
must be nothing of the theory at first, and even in 
the higher schools the theory should be secondary 
and subordinate. To the young child music always 
has meaning and content; it appeals to his feelings 
directly. In music he needs to hear about the great 
themes in which his feelings are involved, and in no 
way can they be better conveyed to his mind. He may 
thus absorb the mythopceic themes which can be told at 
their best only in rhythm, in music, and also in poetry. 
His music must tell him of home, country, the flag, 
religion, nature; and it must be made to broaden all 
the emotions which inspire these themes. Music, for 
the child, should have something of its historic setting. 
Its story should always go with it, for in this way it 
can be made to express the very soul of great men, 
epochs, events and races, and indeed of all history. 

The origin of music in primitive times affords un- 
mistakable clues to the order and method which must 



MUSIC AND DANCING 275 

be adopted in teaching it to the child. Music did 
not originate as harmony or melody separate from 
other aesthetic motives. Sight, and especially movement, 
were involved. Rhythmic dancing and other forms 
of expression of feeling by movement accompanied 
the expression by voice and instrument. Thus sight, 
sound, and movement were combined, the basis or co- 
ordinating principle being rhythm. Likewise in the 
child's mind, sight, sound, and movement go together, 
and they should not be separated in the early stages of 
musical education. The purely rhythmic stage needs 
great and early emphasis, and we can say that music 
for the child must always be made to appeal to mo- 
tion. To learn to read from notes before there is a 
wide knowledge of music through song, or in any 
other way to distract the attention from the feeling, 
or to limit self-expression is wrong. The child's mu- 
sic is at its best when it is free and natural. Thus 
there is a profound sanction for the dramatic expression 
of music by the child. When he plays his part, sing- 
ing, dancing, and representing, he is the nearest to 
participating as a whole person in a process of learn- 
ing or self-education that he will ever be. It must 
never be forgotten that the prime intention of the 
music of the lower grades is not to learn music as 
such, nor to train the intellect, but to teach children 
to feel nature, religion, country, home, duty, and all 
the rest of the deepest themes of life. 

To what extent primitive music, as the genetic view 
seems logically to assert, may be used in the early 
stages of musical culture is yet to be discovered by 



276 ' GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

experience. It seems, however, that we have over- 
looked stages of interest in music which should be 
filled out by an appeal to primitive forms of music, 
and that the best of it should be worked over and 
arranged for the child, in ways in which we have not 
yet made a beginning. 

At early adolescence again there comes a time when 
feeling is dominant, when all the emotional life is 
plastic and in a state of flux, and when, therefore, it 
is certain that music has great educative value. It 
can then be made in a wonderful way to control 
the mind, to educate the sentiments, to assist in the 
struggle that now takes place in the individual to reach 
the highest maturity. It seems as though all must 
admit that our present musical standards are too low, 
when its functions are thus judged. As a whole, pres- 
ent school music is lacking in ethical and educative 
qualities. Music is isolated too much from its broad 
basis of rhythmic movement, accent, cadence, inflec- 
tion, and feeling generally. Much of the school music 
now in use is chosen with too much reference to the 
standards of the musical critic and too little to the 
needs of youth. It is too special and too technical. 
We forget that our music has had a rapid growth, 
that it is an intricate and finished product, much of it 
remote from the interests of the child. Programme- 
less music came late in the race; it should be late in 
education. Music must be judged in other ways than 
by expert criticism. So important is it to select the 
right music for the period of adolescence that every 
tune that is admitted must be judged not only for 



MUSIC AND DANCING 2^ 

its aesthetic qualities but especially for its effect upon 
the moral life and mental poise. We must not forget 
that the first object of teaching music is not to make 
musicians, and that, so far as direct efforts of the 
music teacher are concerned, the purpose is far more 
to teach appreciation. There must be quantity and 
variety of the best music, both instrumental and vocal. 
Wind instruments appeal especially at the adolescent 
period. The violin also appeals to the feelings and 
may well be made the school instrument as it is in 
Germany. The new mechanical piano players widen 
the scope and opportunity of the music teacher, and 
should be used in every school. 

The importance of the music course does not end, 
however, with the high school ; for the whole period 
of adolescence, during its ten years or more, is a 
golden time for the education of the emotions by 
this fundamental means. The present status of music 
in the college is deplorable. The quality of the music 
that interests the student is poor, as is well shown 
by the glee club music prevalent everywhere in this 
country. And despite the fact that music, in its larg- 
est sense, is the most liberal and most humanistic of 
all studies, and therefore should be taken by the great- 
est number of students, it is now confined to the few, 
and is usually taken by these with interest predom- 
inantly in the technique. 

No course in college should be deemed of more im- 
portance, nor more central than music. The profes- 
sor of music is charged more than any other teacher 
with the custody of the emotions, and should regard 



278 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

his work as deeply ethical and educational. He is a 
teacher of morals and religion, but he may easily be- 
come a teacher of immorality and an advocate of 
degeneracy and weakness; and if he puts musical 
form and technique before human interest his work 
may be but negative and mildly stimulating to the 
intellect, leaving the rich field of the emotions un- 
touched. 

It is not yet understood to what an extent the mind, 
even of the college youth, is susceptible to musical 
culture, nor how great is the need of prolonging far 
into adolescence interest in the great, deep, simple 
themes of music, such as attract even the child. There 
is a long period when appreciation may be far in ad- 
vance of ability to construct or perform, or to take 
intellectual attitudes : when the mind must not be 
hampered by dissection and analysis, but when all 
the great composers must be heard and their mean- 
ing absorbed. And in the many who will never in any 
sense become musicians this attitude of appreciation 
must be especially cultivated, for its effect upon the 
emotions, and upon all the higher sentiments. Most 
of the world's great music should be heard and appre- 
ciated, understood, and known. Scores of selections 
should be known by heart. The simpler music, the 
folk-song, the ballad, the ethnic music should come 
first, and the mind should linger upon these great 
themes longer than is as yet understood. Gradually, 
as the foundation is laid, the works of the classic and 
later composers may be introduced. Even in the 
courses in composition the generic order must not be 



MUSIC AND DANCING 279 

overlooked. Work should begin with music of the 
type of the folk-song, and should pass from this up 
to the more purely musical forms. Through all the 
periods when, in the child and youth, expression 
in higher forms of art is weak, it must not be for- 
gotten that simple music, richly set in gesture, posture, 
pantomime, and declamatory action preceded music 
of pure tone, and that tone and tune merely served 
to eke out a meaning which could only in small part 
be thus expressed; that in teaching the child and the 
youth the purpose is to appreciate the deepest meaning 
and to express it in whatever way is possible, and 
suited to the stage of development of the mind. 

We . need a much better course in the history of 
music than is usually found in the college. The lives 
of the great composers and musicians should be 
studied, and this historical point of view be made the 
basis of all the other intellectual work of the musical 
course. From the purely musical theme as a centre, 
knowledge should radiate out into other fields. The 
first accessory should be the study of mythology, for 
music has grown up in the race in connection with 
story, and the two should not be separated in the 
youth's education. The student of music must know 
the great stories of the world, both secular and re- 
ligious, and all the higher sentiments must be culti- 
vated if he would really understand his art. 

Dancing. — Dancing occupies a place in education 
hitherto not understood. It has performed a large 
part in the education of the race, and it is capable 
of doing a great service to the child. It is more than 



28o GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

bodily exercise, for both mind and body participate. 
It is a means of expressing thought in the movement 
in which it originated, and most broadly conceived, 
it may be called a liberal humanistic culture of the 
emotions through motion. Feeling and movement are 
correlated with one another. Each may intensify or 
regulate and control the other. Hence the great pos- 
sibilities of dancing in the education of the child. 
To understand these fully we must consider dancing 
both in its expressive and in its descriptive aspects, 
the latter including such movements as those of pan- 
tomime and pageantry. 

Dancing originated in spontaneous expression of 
internal states. Therefore its first intention is not 
to communicate states of feeling, but to express them. 
It is also the basis of music, which likewise is spon- 
taneous expression of feeling. Motion seems to be 
always the natural expression of musical feeling; 
therefore we must regard this relation as deep and 
fundamental, and consider it well in studying the prac- 
tical application of dancing to education. We may 
probably assert that in rhythmic movement we reach 
a far older phyletic stage than even play itself. So 
immediate is the connection of the dance, or movement 
in some form, with musical expression that we can 
say that no music of any kind can ever be compre- 
hended without a motor accompaniment on the part 
of the hearer. Music always means motion, or at 
least posture. All true music prompts us to act it 
out. Indeed much national music is based upon na- 
tional dances and tries merely to represent the motion. 



MUSIC AND DANCING 281 

When the dances it expresses have been lost, our 
only means of having the whole of the music is to 
re-create the movement which originally suggested 
it. One origin, or incitement, of the dance is work. 
Many ancient industries were concerted and rhythmic, 
and out of these grew dances, when they came to be 
used as play, song, and movement. Many of these we 
still have as imitative action songs. They have a great 
value in initiating children into the spirit and move- 
ment of many human occupations through the aid of 
gesture and song. 

Another source of dancing is play. In the play- 
inspired dances all the human emotions are expressed 
in movement. Joy, pain, grief, pity, anger, fear, jeal- 
ousy, and love are thus expressed. Such plays have 
served a useful purpose, for they help both to develop 
and to balance the emotions by directly exercising the 
organs of control and expression. 

Another great motive of the dance has been to ex- 
press religious feeling. The religious motive has at 
all times sought expression in movement, and move- 
ment is still capable of educating this highest of all 
sentiments. Next to religion, of the sentiments, love 
has been the great inspirer of the dance. It has been 
used, not only to express this passion, but to arouse it, 
to control it, and even to act as a substitute for it. 

These motives still lurk in the dance and the im- 
pulses that lead to it, and give it its momentum. Dan- 
cing, when unrestrained and free, still expresses these 
old racial activities, portraying the experiences upon 
which our ancestors lavished most of the energies of 



282 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

their bodies and minds. It is this which gives the 
clue to the possibilities of dancing in the education of 
the child. 

More widely considered, in its descriptive as well 
as its expressive aspects, dancing is almost equivalent 
to motion. All mental action has efferent factors, and 
it is only because now we have developed to so high a 
point of perfection the special form of speech, that we 
have lost and forgotten the possibilities of other forms 
of expression. We have little conception of what 
gesture has done, and can do, in expressing thought 
and feeling. In it there is a natural language com- 
mon to all men, and out of it conventional languages 
of a highly special character, like the systems of speech 
of the deaf and dumb, can be formed. In our speech, 
in English most of all, we have gone too far toward 
eliminating movement. We have developed toward 
ease of expression, those sounds, like the E, which are 
easiest to express, being most frequent. The question 
is whether, at least in the early stage of language, 
ease has not been gained at the expense of richness 
of content and concreteness of meaning, and so has 
caused deterioration in the thought processes them- 
selves. If this be so, a wide-spread revival of the mo- 
tor factors of expression is needed, to restore our lost 
powers. 

From this standpoint, which is the genetic, we can 
say in the most general terms, that the function of 
dancing, conceived in its broadest sense as it ought to 
be, is to restore the lost motor elements both to speech 
and to music, in order to rehabilitate the emotions and 



MUSIC AND DANCING 283 

feelings which originally accompanied them, to re- 
live racial experience, and to restore these stages of 
expression by means of the whole body to their rightful 
place in mental and physical education. Thus dancing 
includes not only the whole range of folk-dances and 
occupation movements of the race, its religious, war, 
and love dances, but all such forms of expression 
as mimicry, pantomime, gesture, and pageantry — 
everything which has in the past been a means of 
expression of thought and feeling, in the form of 
movement. In this way we restore not only the motor 
elements needed, because they are parts of a whole, 
but we bring back to thought itself something of its 
former vividness and intensity. Such a movement 
would tend to make thinking more sane and honest, 
as well as more vigorous, and would help to keep it 
in contact with real life. Considered in its more im- 
mediate physical effects dancing is not only exercise, 
but it teaches correct bodily habits, creates a sense of 
joy and freedom, cultivates rhythm, teaches ease and 
economy of movements, balance, control and bearing. 
By it all the sentiments, even the religious, can be cul- 
tivated. 

The new dancing, which is as far removed from 
all we have had in the past of conventional dancing as 
can be conceived, should be taught in every school- 
room. The dances must be simple, rhythmic, and al- 
low great freedom of movement and expression, and 
to understand the full scope of the dance we must 
always keep in mind the evolutionary view. We must 
regard dances as essentially narratives in motion, of 



284 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

events which have persisted in the race, in the form 
of movement, after much of their original meaning 
has been forgotten. They are often old story roots, 
once accompanied by song. They contain a story 
which is now lost, but whose spirit, ideal, and mood 
they still express and restore. Thus dances are use- 
ful in education because they tell history, depict na- 
tional traits, and express the thought and feeling of 
those who created them. The effect upon the dancer 
is to arouse these characters and feelings, to make him 
re-live the life of the race, and thus to widen and com- 
plete his personality. 

The national folk-dances, especially, suggest them- 
selves as a very rich field. Especially in America, 
where the immigrant problem is urgent, we should 
try to keep alive and foster an interest in these dances, 
for not only do they contain possibilities of social 
amalgamation and morality, but they are in a high 
degree educative. We should connect them with 
methods of developing our own national holidays. 
The work that lies before us is to select and teach 
the best dances from all nations, and adjust them to 
stages of growth and interest in the child. 

Another rich field is the occupation dance. The 
mimetic performance of occupations, with the old 
songs that accompanied them, cannot fail to help to 
idealise labour in the minds of children. They con- 
tain just the rudiments of primitive and even modern 
industries and occupations that are fitted to give sym- 
pathy and zest both for toil and play, for they are 
at the same time recapitulatory of past experience and 



MUSIC AND DANCING 285 

preparatory for steps that are to follow. These 
dances stimulate imagination and observation. How 
much meaning they can convey may be seen from a 
study of the mediaeval festivals of Europe, many of 
which were nothing else than the representation of 
physical toil in play and dance, symbols of man's con- 
quest of nature. 

At adolescence there is a great influx of interest 
in dancing, which our present ball-room dances are 
utterly inadequate to cope with. At this age girls turn 
rather to the more graceful and conventional dances 
and boys to the more extravagant, expressive, and 
unusual. There is now much latent talent that in 
our present methods never comes to expression. 
There is indeed, in dancing, quite as much opportu- 
nity, not only for expression of thought and feeling, 
as in any other art, but scope for the highest genius 
and originality. Children should be encouraged to 
express themselves in this natural way. There is 
now much opportunity for the teacher of dancing, 
which we still but imperfectly understand. The ex- 
treme infectiousness of the interest in dancing, the 
strange tendency, seen so often in dances of primi- 
tive peoples, to throw off restraint and to dance to the 
uttermost limits of endurance, as though the effort 
were to set loose all the primeval forces of the body 
and mind, suggest powers in the dance as yet unsus- 
pected, and indicate that it may do far more for the 
body and mind than we yet perceive, at the age when 
the effort of nature is to expand not only the physical 
but the emotional powers, and to widen the individual 



286 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

through racial experience. At least we can say that 
there is here a mode of physical culture which the 
evolutionary view asserts to be fundamental and nor- 
mal. On the social side, it is likely that properly se- 
lected dances, representing the right stage of culture 
would make the very best basis upon which the sexes 
can meet in the adolescent years, and that all feelings 
can be educated by the dance, the religious, as well as 
any other. 

References. — 196, 248, 257, 263, 280, E. P. 



CHAPTER XXII 

DRAWING AND ART 

Recent psychology has tended to revolutionalise 
the theory and practice of the teaching of drawing by 
bringing it into line with other subjects now directed 
by evolutionary views; and, by so doing, has fairly 
reversed many of the hitherto accepted practices, for 
almost no subject has been so dominated by logical 
methods as has drawing. The philosophy of drawing 
seems to have passed through several stages, in a 
very short time, from an acceptance of the old sys- 
tematic method, to a day of experimentation, indi- 
vidual preference, and search for standard, correct 
methods, and finally to the prevailing view-point based 
upon genetic psychology, which, while it allows suf- 
ficient latitude for all good methods, insists upon a 
certain fundamental law which must not be violated in 
any subject. 

This most general principle, underlying the teach- 
ing of drawing and all other instruction in art, is the 
law of the relation of ontogeny to philogeny. Studies 
of the child show that he follows, roughly at least, 
the order of racial development, in his interests in 
drawing, that his native instincts toward expression 
in drawing are strong, and that the ability to draw 

287 



288 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

is very complex, including several distinct functions 
and interests, each having its own nascent period and 
manner of development. Distinguished ability in 
drawing requires good powers of observation, clear 
memory, lively imagination, manual skill, strong feel- 
ings, and aesthetic sense. 

In the past, the habit has been to ignore the nat- 
ural interests and methods of the child, and to insist 
upon precisely the kind of work the child most es- 
pecially rejects. This method has begun with ele- 
ments, such as the straight line, and the regular curve, 
and with conventional subjects generally, ignoring en- 
tirely the child's insistence upon drawing the most 
difficult and complex of all subjects, the human figure 
in excited action, and therefore failing to make use 
of the momentum and imaginative fertility the child 
would bring to his work. In place of this reluctance 
to allow the child free choice, the new pedagogy of 
drawing gives him a free hand during the early stages, 
to draw that which will give him most pleasure when 
it is finished, and does not insist upon his drawing that 
which shall be most pleasing to the teacher, nor most 
logical as a step in artistic education considered from 
the adult's point of view. The aim is to encourage 
and stimulate interest and activity, rather than to 
repress and correct. Matter and not method, in a 
word, is made the first consideration. Quantity of 
production is placed ahead of perfection of finish. 

These general points of view, in which the evo- 
lutionary principle is applied, and the many special 
studies that have been made of the child's interests in 



DRAWING AND ART 289 

drawing, enable one to declare with confidence the 
following rules to guide the teaching of drawing. 

Matter and method must be judged by their value 
and meaning to the child. In this the attitude is so in- 
dividual that mass methods and uniform courses are 
peculiarly unsuccessful. 

The first stage in learning to draw, common to all, 
is the scribble stage, a stage of complete freedom of 
movement, which must be given all possible scope. 

In the next stage, some idea or mental image be- 
gins to direct or control the drawing movements. The 
child now tries to express something. This is the age 
at which he draws stories. The aim in this stage 
should be to stimulate wide interests in the things about 
the child which can excite the imagination. 

When the child has entered school, the suggestions 
for this expressive drawing should come from the 
work of the day; from history, geography, nature 
study, and reading. All through this stage the draw- 
ing should come from memory, rather than from direct 
observation of objects as such. It must still be free 
and playful, rather than in any sense artistic. The 
mental content must be enriched and made clear and 
vivid. 

Not before eight or nine does the child attempt to 
copy objects in nature: that is, to reproduce things in 
nature as they actually appear. 

Systematic art teaching should not begin much be- 
fore ten. 

At about puberty drawing ceases to be merely the 
registration of ideas, and shows signs of becoming 



2go GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

pure art. Now emotion, tone and mood appear, to 
carry the truly artistic child to new powers. But the 
majority, at this stage, lapse into a purely schematic 
way of work. Therefore, after the age of fourteen, 
probably instruction in drawing should not be given, 
except to the specially gifted. 

After ten, all systematic work should be in the hands 
of a special teacher. 

In the later stage, for the majority, emphasis should 
be placed upon appreciation rather than upon produc- 
tion. Very few adults will use artistic drawing, and 
the time required to gain proficiency may be spent 
to better advantage in other and more practical direc- 
tions. 

In the choice of materials for drawing, we have still 
much to learn. It is a logical inference from the 
phylogenetic relationship of the child that much could 
be found in primitive drawing and art that would 
stimulate and help mould the child's artistic sense. 
This, however, is as yet largely an unexplored field, 
for no sufficient tests have been made. The purpose 
of it would be, in any case, to arouse native interests, 
to stimulate imagination, and to provide content and 
feeling, rather than merely to educate eye and hand, 
as most of the hitherto accepted methods have done, 
in trying to appeal directly to the child's appreciation 
of form which is at first rudimentary. Another field, 
suggested by the recapitulatory principle, is to be 
found in symbolism. Much of the drawing of the 
race has had, as its chief impulse, the representation, 
symbolically, of objects, events, or feelings; and when 



DRAWING AND ART 291 

this attitude can be aroused in the child, a great ad- 
vantage is gained, for then meaning is involved at 
every step. Such an interest places content in the 
lead, as it should, and brings into play large areas 
of mental activity, and perhaps stirs inherited reac- 
tions; and yet it focuses everything upon definite ac- 
tion, which is again a correct procedure. The child 
is thus made to feel something of union or sympathy 
with his object before he begins to draw, and so he 
draws with more zest and expression. 

If feeling and inner activity of thought should be 
the foundation of all artistic work, from the begin- 
ning, surely in the later stages when beauty is the 
dominant motive, still more must emotion be the root 
of everything. We have, in this country, fallen away 
from a day of greater appreciation of the beautiful, 
when there was much interest in making everything 
that was useful also ornamental — when household 
utensils, fireplaces and furniture were ornamental as 
well as durable. Art is connected at every point with 
practical life, and is not merely for the few who can 
learn to express themselves in artistic form. Only by 
fully understanding this can we estimate the place it 
must have in education. Every individual is limited to 
a narrow sphere. He craves a broader life, a freer 
and wider range of emotions. These cravings impel 
him onward toward a higher plane of energy, in which 
he finds a union of the real and the ideal, of sense and 
faith ; in which he escapes from personality and civil- 
isation, and becomes united with the life of the whole 
race. Art, most broadly conceived, is the regulator of 



292 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

all these emotions. It satisfies and directs them, and 
keeps them within bounds. So art is always a product 
of passion and inspiration, and it must be taught in 
that spirit; for without exalted emotion there can 
be no truly artistic enthusiasm nor education. Art, 
too, is not merely the language of sensuous beauty. 
It is full of meaning at every point. It must be made, 
even more than any other subject, to teach youth 
about nature and man. So the need, all along the 
line, is for an emotional awakening, for a cultivation 
of sentiment. Appreciation, rather than expression, 
must be the basis of art education in the schools. 
This appreciation must be secured by familiarity with 
the works of art that present every great and noble 
passion. Thus taught, art may become one of the 
most powerful aids in the development of the child, 
especially in the period of transition from childhood 
to adolescence. But to make art thus serve the child, 
it must come into contact with real life at every point. 
The sense of the beautiful must be infused into com- 
mon life. It must be made to connect with all in- 
dustry and raise it to a higher level, for industry must 
always remain crude and cheap until it gratifies in 
some way the love of beauty. 

One of the most practical means of education of 
the artistic senses is the picture. Much more atten- 
tion should be given to this than is at present done, 
for, by the picture, feeling and interest may be stirred 
deeply. There should be many kinds of pictures, and 
the test is not so much their acceptability to the adult 
artist as to the child. There should be bright wall 



DRAWING AND ART 



293 



pictures, especially for younger children, many of 
them perhaps crude from the artistic standpoint. The 
pictures should be full of occupation and action and 
thus bring into the schoolroom something of the stir- 
ling life outside. Art as such, we must remember, 
has little interest at first for the child, for he has 
but little appreciation of technique and form. His 
interest is primarily in content, in meaning, and hu- 
man interest and feeling. Pictures should therefore, 
first of all, aim to minister to these natural interests, 
and not try, out of season, to force upon the child 
a love of the classical in beauty. Almost all the work 
of the school may, in one way or another, be vivified 
by pictures, while, at the same time, the sense of form 
and beauty is being gradually cultivated. There 
should be pictures, illustrating all the classical sub- 
jects. Science, especially geography, fairly cries out 
for better pictorial treatment. There is a great field, 
too, for the stereopticon, and the motion picture, 
which in the future may be made to do incalculable 
good for education. In all this, there should not be 
too zealous desire to separate off that which is purely 
beautiful from meaning, story, or content. Art that 
reaches pure sensuous form is a late development in 
the race, and should be in the child's interest, if we 
are to make art development natural, and keep it in 
contact with real life. We can gradually bring ar- 
tistic appreciation out of the interest in content, by 
following the order of the child's natural interests, 
and thus do the best service, both for those who will 
execute and for those who will merely appreciate. 



294 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

It is only the very few who will profit by close train- 
ing in technique, and we must take care that all the 
study of art be not dictated and dominated by the 
needs of these few, rather than of the many. 

References. — 137, E. P. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

PHILOSOPHY IN THE COLLEGE 

In the philosophy of the college, there is a possi- 
bility of great culture for youth, and also danger of 
grave evils, both intellectual and moral. Philosophy 
may knit up the mind, and strengthen it for a life of 
strong interests and mental progress; it may deepen 
knowledge of life, and capacity for religion; and it 
may balance and harmonise all the activities, practical 
and cultural. On the other hand, it may narrow the 
intellectual horizon; dull zest for work; make all the 
future interests in facts and concrete realities less 
keen; lead to a premature intellectual finality; and 
breed in the mind a spirit of pessimism, indifference, 
and criticism. 

The narrow and critical philosophy is all too fre- 
quently found in college work; and in many instances 
it is a harm to youth which no future training can 
entirely eradicate. The evils of philosophy are seen 
at the worst in the conventional course in epistemology 
which leads a long devious descent through Locke, 
Berkeley, Hume, and Kant; and lays bare all the er- 
rors, limitations, and contradictions of the reason of 
man. It leaves the youth with an universal doubt, 
without a real world. It teaches to disrespect the 

295 



296 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

teachings of the physical sciences and strips away all 
conventions, opinions, beliefs, and childhood creeds 
of the youth, in order to initiate him into the higher 
art of thought. Out of this dilemma the philosophy 
of the college, it is true, tries to lead, through a con- 
structive philosophy of one kind or another, but the 
whole process is unnatural and too complicated. It 
centres the interest too strongly upon the mind of the 
individual, and makes the world seem narrow and 
pinched. It is too minutely logical and fine-spun, and 
it leads to a hopeless slavery to a method of thought, 
and the habit of getting all knowledge out of the mind, 
and of testing the truth of everything by formal prin- 
ciples. Such a philosophy shuts the youth off for- 
ever from the joys of true discovery and enquiry, for 
he feels that whatever truths he may come upon are 
already in his mind, and if he but apply his method he 
can find them. All this is an unnatural complicating 
of what nature has made plain ; it is too meagre in 
facts ; it is precocious, and like the wisdom of old 
age. This will not do for youths. We must inspire 
in them a philosophy suited to their age, and to the 
needs of a long future. Argument and criticism are 
excellent disciplines at a certain stage, but to carry 
these too far, especially into the most vital regions, 
where a wholesome and simple faith is vastly more 
needed than learning, is a great error, and misun- 
derstands the most fundamental principles of the na- 
ture of youth. 

Now, instead of centring the interests of the young 
student upon abstract definitions of life, attention 



PHILOSOPHY IN THE COLLEGE 297 

should be given to the problems that are found where 
life is most intense and reality is most real. The 
plain sense of right and wrong, and the simple belief 
in the reality of the worlds of matter and mind had bet- 
ter not be disturbed at all, if agnosticism and scepticism 
must result, even temporarily. Certainly those who 
understand the nature and needs of youth at all must 
see that philosophy ought to lead to optimism, to faith 
and affirmation, rather than to doubt. It is the pos- 
itive rather than the negative aspect of it which must 
be emphasised. Progress must be measured by ca- 
pacity to believe rather than by capacity to doubt. At 
the end of his course the student must be left with an 
eager curiosity to know the world better, and he must 
not feel that he already has mastered its inmost prin- 
ciples. Philosophy must end as a guide to right liv- 
ing, as well as in skill in logical disputation. 

There are two kinds of philosophy admirably fitted 
to the needs of academic youth. Philosophy should, 
in the first place, be a summing up and unifying of all 
the great principles of the sciences. All the work in 
science in the lower grades should lead toward this 
philosophy. The student must be made to see that 
all are leading to the same end, in the service of 
man, and he must understand that the universe is one, 
is purposeful and filled with law and order. The vast- 
ness, depth, and breadth of its meanings must be 
strongly impressed upon him. 

The second philosophic need is for some kind of a 
transcendentalism. Now is the time to impress upon 
the mind the truths of the higher spiritualism. Duties 



298 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

must appear as divine commands, and the relations of 
the individual to the universe of spirit must be felt. 
This is simply an effective form of appeal to that 
larger portion of life which is instinctive and emo- 
tional, and which exists before the intellect has fully 
come into its power. It makes for a higher type of 
virtue and faith. In the German idealism is a phi- 
losophy than which nothing is more stimulating to 
youth, if it be properly taught. A course in idealism 
as taught by Kant, Plato, Hegel, and the rest stimu- 
lates the development of mental powers and gives 
inner resources against all corroding pessimism, 
teaches how to solve the practical problems of life, 
gives zest and breadth and insight in any intellectual 
career — and, in a word, it is unsurpassed or unequalled 
by any other element of education in inspiring youth 
with ideals. It especially illuminates religious senti- 
ments, gives poise against the inroads of doubt and 
scepticism, provides weapons with which to meet them, 
and it is a philosophy which should be the main-stay 
of all who would speak and be heard on the subject of 
religion. 

All the other philosophical disciplines : logic, ethics, 
and psychology, need to be put upon a better basis. 
The subject of logic needs to be re-examined, with 
reference to its usefulness in the training of the mind, 
and in order to bring into it new fields to broaden its 
scope. We already have materials for a new logic, 
far better to educate powers of thought, than was 
the old formal logic that has played such a great 
part in the philosophical courses of the college. This 



PHILOSOPHY IN THE COLLEGE 299 

new logic should begin with a study of the history of 
the subject, and should include the story of the devel- 
opment of some parts of philosophy, such as the cate- 
gories. The history of inductive logic should be 
traced, including the history of graphic and statistical 
methods, and the doctrine of probabilities; something 
about standards, constants, symbols, substitutions, 
analogy, continuity; how to observe, test, simplify, 
vary; about hypothesis, classification, averages and 
means, fallacies, and nomenclature. But all this should 
be made concrete, never teaching method without 
illustration with subject-matter and use. The main 
purpose of it all is to enlarge the powers of the mind 
in all departments of work, inductive and deductive. 
Other methods than mere instruction in logic must, 
therefore, be a part of its teaching. Some one subject 
may be taught, with especial attention to its methods; 
and training in laboratory methods and in seminary 
may be made to illustrate the questions of methodology, 
while at the same time it teaches the use of methods 
as applied to special problems. Thus taught, logic 
is not merely a formal discipline, and at most a train- 
ing for the work of abstract philosophy, but is con- 
nected with all other subjects and is a preparation for 
any vocation; for it would teach not only how to 
reason, but how to look and describe, to gather facts, 
estimate probabilities, and many other practical mat- 
ters of every-day life. 

Ethics is the second great branch of American phi- 
losophy. More ethical teaching is done here than any- 
where else in the world, and we have more text-books 



3 oo GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

of our own construction than in any other depart- 
ment. Like logic, ethics has been too closely united 
to abstract philosophy; and although it has been of 
service in opening to young men a transcendental cult, 
and so connecting well with religion, yet it has all been 
too abstract, too deductive, and therefore too nar- 
row in content. It has not been connected closely 
enough with live human nature. Ethics should begin 
with physical hygiene, and should teach the relations 
between health and morality. It should inculcate love 
of nature and love of art, for morals' sake. It should 
plant in the mind of youth the germs of enthusiasm 
for many reforms, and above all else it should inspire 
ideals. We do not need to base our moral life upon 
tradition, nor upon philosophy, but upon human na- 
ture. Therefore ethics that begins with a study 
of human nature, and ends with a betterment of it, 
is the kind to teach, especially in a country like ours, 
where ideals need to be practical. 

The teaching of psychology in the college is un- 
satisfactory also, because it is not yet conceived in 
a broad enough sense. It has in the past busied itself 
too much with the senses and with problems of time 
and space, when it ought to attack the questions of 
feeling and animal life, and follow out the applications 
to sociology, to art, and to education. There is too 
much of the old classification methods of study, which 
remind one of the methods of biology before Darwin. 
There is too much strain after first principles, after 
interpretations along lines of fruitless and narrow 
theories; too much interest in the exceptional facts 



PHILOSOPHY IN THE COLLEGE 301 

of hypnotism, telepathy and the like, and too little 
attempt at broad co-ordinations of methods and inter- 
ests ; too little of mutual sympathy among schools, too 
much interest in quarrels over unsolvable problems. 
And psychology has not yet passed the stage in which 
it is beset with pseudo-scientists, mystics, theosophists, 
and all the others of like character who have not yet 
seen what psychology as a science is concerned about. 

A complete study of the present knowledge of psy- 
chology, and an all-round training for attacking its 
problems, must include the following departments. 
This might be called an ideal department of psychology 
for the university. 

There must be, first, a good background of history 
of philosophy, of science, medicine, literature, and 
religion. Next comes a knowledge of general biology : 
all its main standpoints and theories, the problems 
of heredity, all the Darwinian problems ; and there 
should be some training in laboratory methods, in the 
use of the microscope and the like. Then should 
come the study of the habits and instincts of animals, 
and for all this there is need of equipment with the 
facilities of zoology. Physiological psychology must 
have some background in general physiology, beginning 
with the subjects of digestion and nutrition. Then 
there must be the experimental methods, common to 
some parts of physiology and psychology. Then must 
come a study of the psychological side of anthropology. 
In this department there is already accumulated a 
vast knowledge, including studies of language, myths, 
literatures and customs. Some attention should be 



3 02 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

given to the physical problems of anthropology, such as 
study of types of senses, and to the subject of mental 
and physical measurements. Criminology presents an- 
other, more special subject, closely related to normal 
psychology. Then there is neurology, the study of 
nervous diseases, and psychiatry, the study of mental 
diseases, related to many problems of medicine, law, 
and ethics. Finally, child study, the broadest of all 
the methods of psychology, requiring for interpreta- 
tion of its facts a knowledge of all other departments. 

References. — 64, 82, 104, 131, 141, 196, 220, 268. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

THE KINDERGARTEN 

We can preface a study of the school grades by 
the assertion that the younger the pupil the more ear- 
nestly must his needs be studied ; the more undeveloped 
he is, and therefore the more generalised and all-em- 
bracing the culture we must impart to him, the more 
we need to know of the philosophy of life — and, 
failing to possess such a philosophy, the more we 
must bring to bear the best instincts and intuitions. 

The kindergarten ideal, as it was conceived by Froe- 
bel, is worthy of the greatest admiration and devo- 
tion, but as applied by most of his followers, especially 
in America, where the kindergarten has been carried 
much further than in Germany, it has in some ways 
been perverted, and over-conventionalised, and has 
failed to absorb the spirit of the progress in educa- 
tion. It has tended to become set apart from all other 
educational institutions, and has perfected a highly 
metaphysical and symbolic doctrine of its own, and 
a worship of the letter of Froebel, not in keeping with 
our American ideals of independent thought and prog- 
ress. What is most needed is a campaign to free 
Froebel from his followers. 

As held by Froebel, the kindergarten idea was based 
303 



3 04 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

upon nine great and true principles. He maintained 
that the child repeats the history of the race ; that the 
feelings and instincts are the germ of both intellect 
and will; that self-activity, spontaneity, and play are 
creative ; that the higher monistic Christian pantheism 
which he represents is the true philosophy of educa- 
tion; that children are originally sound, and congen- 
ially sinless ; that they should be allowed at each stage 
what that stage calls for; that harmony and love are 
the rule ; that we must live for our children, and that 
there is nothing else worth living for ; that health and 
out-door life, close to nature and earth, are the child's 
great needs. His great fault, the principle from which 
his followers have derived much wrong practice, is 
that he believed the simplest thing or act too great to 
be expressed. He was a symbolist, and expressed in 
the gifts and occupations the extreme views of the 
inner significance of the infant's every thought and 
feeling, quite disproven now by all we know of the 
child's nature. It was the spirit of his system that 
was great and true; it was the practical application 
that was weak and inadequate. It all needs, there- 
fore, a new interpretation in the light of new prin- 
ciples, and especially correction on the side of its 
methods of instruction. Though the philosophy of 
Froebel is the best and most inspiring for teachers and 
mothers, the whole system needs sadly the light of 
modern educational theories, and needs to be brought 
into more definite relations, both theoretically and prac- 
tically, with the rest of the system. 

Now it is precisely this fault of the kindergarten 



THE KINDERGARTEN 305 

philosophy in over-emphasising the needs of the child 
as a supposed possessor of the higher sentiments and 
thoughts, and the lack of emphasis upon the child 
as a physical body, crude in organisation, having much 
in common with animal and savage, that is the secret 
of its unnaturalness ; and it is just at this point that 
it most needs reform. The kindergarten has usually 
offered unhygienic physical environment to the child. 
There has been too little of out-door life, too much 
mental stimulus. The kindergartens have often been 
established in the most unhygienic parts of the school 
building, having defective light and ventilation. The 
important element of care of the body should be pro- 
vided for first of all, and the kindergarten needs to 
assume more of the qualities of a good nursery ; and, 
both for her own sake, and for the child's, the teacher 
should stand as completely as possible in the mother's 
place. She should know something about the illnesses 
of children, and about many matters of hygiene. Im- 
provement here would mean a change of ideal, from 
emphasis upon the work of rapidly unfolding the men- 
tal nature of the child, to that of delayed maturity, 
which is the ideal of the biological education. The 
child needs more mother and less teacher, and es- 
pecially less metaphysician, during all the first years 
of his development. One of the first needs is for 
more bodily movement, in the old standard games, 
and less of the symbolic plays and restrained move- 
ments of close work. So far as possible, strain on 
hand and eye, and tension of cramped positions must 
be done away with. The kindergarten should keep the 



3 o6 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

child during more hours of the day, and in order to do 
this safely to health, it must construct an ideal en- 
vironment. There must be ample opportunity for 
rest, and even sleep and feeding, if necessary; and with 
this should go training in manners, and in all hygienic 
and cleanly habits. There must be all possible con- 
tact with nature. All the standard stories, myths and 
animal tales should be told and acted. There should 
be fairy-tales and stories of savage life. Music is in- 
dispensable, and should be made prominent. There 
must be old ballads, songs of nature, of God, home, 
country, all aimed to educate the simple feelings in 
a natural way. Songs with action are important. 
There must be an abundance of pictures and objects. 
There must be dancing, marching, many scores of 
plays and games. In place of two or three kinds of 
fish or insects kept in cases, several scores of plants 
and animals are needed, for every possible contact with 
real life must be maintained. 

Here the largest demand upon the intelligence and 
sympathy of the teacher arises. The teacher must 
know about nature. She must know the lore of birds, 
flowers, trees, and animals ; and she must know how 
to take the child to nature, and bring nature's influence 
to bear upon the child. The nature study in the 
kindergarten must be broad and deep, and upon this 
all the indoor work of the school should be based. 
The child will be responsive to every feeling the teacher 
herself may have for nature. Sky, stars, thunder, 
water, moon, and clouds will all excite wonder and 
deep reactions in the mind of the child. The teacher 



THE KINDERGARTEN 307 

should understand that this is the most important in- 
terest she can inspire, that it is all-conditioning, and 
that everything else vital in education depends upon it. 
The kindergarten teacher should be trained broadly in'* 
the kind of nature study that brings the child into 
close touch, in feeling and thought, with nature as a 
whole, rather than in the indoor study of plant and 
animal forms. 

In close connection with such nature study there 
should be more play out-of-doors in the elements; 
snow, wood, stones, all the rougher and larger things 
should be freely used to bring out the fundamental 
feelings of the child, and to train the basal muscle co- 
ordinations. These plays should later be more di- 
rected and take the form of imitations of all the great 
human activities: of battles, funerals, weddings, re- 
ligious ceremonies, perhaps even of crimes, trials, and 
punishments. 

The methods that centre about the gifts and plays 
must be greatly broadened; for it is just at this point 
that devotion to an abstract theory and an unnatural 
symbolism block the whole work of education through 
varied expression, which is the true method. The 
gifts and occupations have been greatly over-empha- 
sised, and just because the belief in them is based 
upon metaphysics, they are peculiarly tenacious and 
but little modifiable by ordinary reflection and com- 
mon sense. The truth of the matter is that there are 
hundreds of things quite as suitable for the child as 
the conventional gifts and occupations of the kinder- 
garten; and to shut the child up to the meagre list 



3 o8 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

of the system is to be in danger of doing the reverse 
of what Froebel himself intended should be accom- 
plished by the kindergarten. The whole toy world 
should be opened to the child, and the interest in toys 
should grow out of an interest in nature. The child's 
love goes out to animals first, then to plants and finally 
to inanimate things ; an order which the gifts of the 
kindergarten quite reverse. Especially dolls should 
be used in abundance, for their educative value is far 
greater than that of any other inanimate thing. There 
should be plenty of opportunity for free play with 
these toys, and there must be practice in coarse move- 
ments of scribbling and free drawing, but no sys- 
tematic or close work of any kind. The nature of the 
young child opposes all system, and it has no organs 
with which to appreciate it. Anything in which mean- 
ing exists for the teacher solely, and not for the child, 
is wrong. All such work is wasted effort. It strug- 
gles to inculcate what will later come of itself; and 
which, until the time is ripe cannot be forced upon the 
child. All the interests in straight line, sphere and 
cube, all mathematical conceptions whatever, are ut- 
terly foreign to the child's nature. 

In the kindergarten much more weight should be 
put upon imitation. The teacher's spirit and person- 
ality are all important. Her expression, her voice, its 
cadences and inflections, are all greatly educative to 
the child. The kindergarten ought to do more for 
the speech of the child. This is the nascent period of 
idiomatic speech. In most kindergartens, as at pres- 
ent conducted, the children do not talk enough. Every- 



THE KINDERGARTEN 309 

thing that is seen or done should be reflected in lan- 
guage, and speech must be linked to activity at every 
possible point. There is good opportunity, during 
these early years of school, for training the ear to the 
sound of foreign languages. 

The kindergarten must employ freely all those in- 
stinctive methods of teaching that are common to 
home and school. Telling, showing, explaining, di- 
recting the attention, telling stories, with plenty of 
the play spirit: these are the methods of introducing 
the child to the world in which he lives. And by 
being natural, the kindergarten will do a great service, 
connecting home and school in a way that can be un- 
derstood and appreciated by all. 

References.— 129, 136, 204, E. P. 



CHAPTER XXV 

THE SCHOOL GRADES 

All the grades of the school need to be infused 
with the spirit now best represented by the best kinder- 
garten ideals. The primary school should connect 
with the kindergarten and continue the methods of 
play, out-door interests, and the like there begun. 
The most important change over current methods that 
is needed is a postponement, for two or three years, 
of reading and writing, and all the change this would 
imply in the curriculum. In this way time would be 
left free for the development of the nascent stages, by 
methods employing more content and less drill and 
repetition than are required by methods that depend 
upon reading and writing. And later, when writing 
and reading are seriously begun, they can be taught 
with far less expenditure of energy and time, than 
when they are begun too early. It would be ideal if 
these formal methods could be delayed until the age 
of ten. Nature, life, and live language should, in the 
primary years, have free access to the mind of the 
child. There should be a beginning of history, of 
foreign language by tongue and ear, industries, plays, 
stories. Let the whole effort be upon feeding the 
mind and bringing out the racial in it, and let 

310 



THE SCHOOL GRADES 



3ii 



the formal drill be pushed ahead out of the way of the 
growing imagination and perceptions. Music should 
not be by note, but should be all rote during these 
years, stimulating to the primary feeling, following the 
child's own preferences in time, tune, and theme. 

At perhaps nine, at the earliest, begins a new period. 
Now the reading and writing drills may be introduced, 
and much formal training. Yet this may be too ex- 
clusively centred upon. The method of live, personal 
contact with teacher and with fellow-pupils must pre- 
vail and dominate. There is too much reading and 
writing in the work of the school. The child should 
live in a world of speech. He should hear and talk 
for hours each day, and thus he will lay the founda- 
tion for good command of his native tongue. He 
should write as he speaks, and should not be ham- 
pered by close analysis of language. There must be 
drill in the forms, but it should be without too much 
explanation and dissection. First, utterance even if 
thereby made homely, ungrammatical, and crude, must 
be freed and made vigorous and adequate. Children 
must not write upon any subject unless there is interest 
and natural feeling. Under guidance of the feelings 
language will develop without forcing. 

Now is the time for drill upon all fundamentals 
and conventional intellectual contents which the com- 
munity demands the child shall possess. Literal 
memory may be drawn upon to almost any extent, and 
it should be used, putting a minimum of strain upon 
reason. If these years are used wisely the child will 
emerge from this training with a prodigious amount 



3 I2 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

of acquisition made once for all. Arithmetic, spelling, 
foreign languages, all things requiring motor technique 
may now be emphasised. The moral life is in pre- 
cisely the same need as the intellectual. It is a time 
of drill and habituation, and not of creative impulse. 
There must be coercion, if necessary to create habit, 
and the child needs severe training in the right di- 
rections. Not so much sentiment and sympathy as 
obedience and order are required of the child in these 
years. Both boys and girls need some instruction 
from male teachers. As man's authority is needed in 
the home, so it is in the school. 

Arithmetic, with its emphasis upon reason, is a type 
of study which is much overdone in the American 
graded schools. In order to facilitate acquisition it 
should be mechanised to a greater degree. There 
should be rules and processes, with plenty of exer- 
cises in mental work, and with but relatively little 
analysis and explanation. 

The child's remarkable powers of acquisition justify 
also emphasis at this time upon all such studies as 
languages, if they are taught in accordance with the 
needs of the age. Always the stress should be upon 
ease of acquisition. There should be oral methods and 
many helps over hard places. Everything must be 
provided that will facilitate the main purpose, the 
definite acquisition and fixing of whatever we wish 
the child to retain permanently. This is the peculiar 
work of the school during the grammar grade years. 
Even foreign languages, if they are to be taught at 
all, may be introduced then, and carried far enough to 



THE SCHOOL GRADES 



313 



fix in mind all the rudiments of grammar and an ex- 
tensive vocabulary. 

If the school has done its work well, the result of 
this cramming process will be shown in an enormous 
store of the necessary conventional knowledge fixed 
once for all, without undue strain or forcing. All the 
necessary parts of arithmetic should be well fixed, and 
the child should be competent both in written and in 
mental methods. He should know about geography, 
especially his own immediate environment, and what 
is necessary of the geography of the rest of the earth, 
including something about social and political organ- 
isations. He should have committed to memory a 
great many of the standard selections of his literature. 
His vocabulary should contain eight or ten thousand 
words, and he should have some knowledge of per- 
haps two foreign languages. The child should know 
well a few books, and should have read and looked 
into a considerable number, especially along lines of 
travel, adventure, natural history, and biography. 
Motor habits must be well trained, and there should 
be interest in, and knowledge of, several industries, 
manual occupations, and of many games and sports. 

References. — 22, 26, 105, 168, 194, 196, 265. 



CHAPTER XXVI 

THE HIGH SCHOOL 

The function of the high school, the great faults 
of the present prevailing system, and the main lines 
upon which reconstruction must be begun, seem very 
plain, when the problem is looked at from the genetic 
point of view. The opportunity of the high school 
is the greatest of that of any department of the school 
system. The child comes to it at the time of his great- 
est spontaneous variation, and at the highest point of 
his educability : the age at which education in all times 
and places has done its best work: the time indeed 
about which training has always centred. At no other 
period does the child so urgently demand that he be 
taught with sole reference to the stage in which he is 
living. 

Considered with reference to the needs of the child, 
and the opportunity before it, the high school as at 
present organised, fails more completely to perform 
its proper function than any other branch of the school. 
No class of teachers is so little interested in the nature 
of the child and the genetic stages, as the teach- 
ers of the secondary school. The logical order and 
division of subjects everywhere prevails and takes 
precedence over the psychological. The studies are 

314 



THE HIGH SCHOOL 315 

not chosen with reference to suitability to the age of 
the child, and they are not taught in such a way as to 
take advantage of the natural learning methods of the 
adolescent age. 

The reason for this condition is plain. The high 
school is a connecting link in a chain leading to the 
college and university. In the high school the child 
prepares for college, and studies those subjects that 
are best as introductions to the subjects taught in 
college. The text-books are for the most part written 
by college teachers, and the method is highly sys- 
tematic, formal, and logical. Work that should 
properly be done in the college is pushed back into 
the secondary school. There is a tendency to believe 
that all subjects as now taught have an equal value 
and consequently that all should receive equal em- 
phasis. The great majority who do not go to college, 
and who have no interest in the college preparatory 
curriculum, are made to suffer for the sake of the 
few who do. The assumption that prevails that fit- 
ting for a college entrance examination, and fitting 
for life are equivalent has wrought havoc with the 
education of youth at the very time when it is most 
capable of profiting by the best training, and most 
likely to suffer from wrong training. It can more 
truly be said that fitting for college is unfitting for 
practical life, so clerical, sedentary, bookish, and ar- 
bitrary is the high school teaching. Almost nothing 
of the current high school courses appeals to the best 
powers of the youth, and those subjects that perhaps 
are best fitted for the time are likely to be taught in 



316 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

such a way as to rob them of all their educative value. 
Another mistake is the assumption that a false demo- 
cratic ideal makes, that all should be educated and 
treated alike in the secondary school — when the oppo- 
site is the truth : a true democratic education demands 
that the individuality of each one be brought out to 
the fullest extent. 

The changes needed are radical, and involve not only 
the whole matter of curriculum and method, but the 
entire conception of the function of the high school. 
The high school must fit better for life the great ma- 
jority who go no further, and be so changed as to 
prevent the loss of the three-fourths who now drop out 
of the course before the end. It must not be consid- 
ered a link in the preparatory steps for college, but 
must act independently, aiming to serve one stage of 
growth, in the best possible way. Entrance examina- 
tions to college should be abandoned and all admission 
to the higher institutions be made by certificate. The 
high school should be able to dictate to the college 
rather than the reverse. The college should be obliged 
to take the product of the high school in the condition 
in which the high school, working according to the 
principles of a genetic education, must leave it; and 
should then, in its own way, proceed to build the next 
higher stage. There is some advantage in extending 
the high school down to perhaps the seventh grade, 
in order to reach the beginning of pubescence, and 
thus to give the older grammar pupils opportunity to 
associate with older children. The high school is too 
eager to do advanced work. It is not right for it to 



THE HIGH SCHOOL 317 

strive to extend upward, and to usurp the work of 
the college. The college ought rather to adopt meth- 
ods more like those of the high school, and to drop 
its affectation of university ways. In the east, espe- 
cially, the influence of the college upon the high school 
is to encourage its isolation from real life. The first 
task of the high school is not so much to lead the child 
on into special subjects, as to review and to remedy 
the defects of the elementary school. The age of 
twelve is the best of all times for summary and review 
of everything that has gone before. It is the last year 
in which drill can be the predominant method, so that 
if defects in the rudiments are not now remedied, 
they never can be. The coeducational plan is not the 
best, for this is the very time of all when the sexes 
differ most and need greatest differentiation in teach- 
ing. There should be more male teachers, and more 
training definitely appealing to the nature of each sex. 
There are too many text-books and too narrow ad- 
herence to them, which results in a conceit of knowl- 
edge antagonistic to further growth, whether in school 
or out. 

As soon as the ideal of the college entrance examina- 
tion is abandoned, anyone can readily see, in a general 
way, the direction in which improvement may be made 
in matter and method of the curriculum. The point 
of view must be shifted from the classical to the nat- 
ural, with a greatly increased content of study, and a 
much reduced attention to form. The basis of the 
work will be the vernacular. Language will be taught 
with reference, not to form, but to content : as litera- 



318 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

ture, history, and science. Oratory will be taught in 
its highest sense as practised by the Romans — as the 
art of influencing human conduct by the truth sent 
home by the living personality. The debating club 
performs an important function. Its power should be 
utilised in much of the work at this period, when the 
pugnacious instincts are so active and forceful, and 
so much in need of being raised to the highest possible 
plane. This is now one of the greatest motives of the 
boy, and the present high school uses it to but a slight 
extent. 

Likewise the dramatic motive — another almost 
neglected factor. This now surging instinct must 
have an important place in the remodelled high school. 
The drama is an incomparable school of life, and its 
ideals and methods are peculiarly fitted to teach youth 
lessons which can be impressed in no other way. So 
drama and dramatic reading, work in which the native 
impulses of the youth can all be employed, must be 
given a central place in the language course. The child 
must not merely hear, but must play a part. 

Another content study that deserves a high place in 
the English work is the mediaeval epic. The youth is 
now emerging into an adulthood which is most akin 
to that of the mediaeval period, and its ideals form 
the best of all culture material to teach manliness, 
chivalry, and valour; and especially to implant the 
sense of honour which is the greatest of all virtues. 

In the matter of literature there should be much 
reading, not too critical and close. The pupils should 
read much, without direct control, and should meet 



THE HIGH SCHOOL 319 

and share their knowledge with one another. Espe- 
cially girls need more rapid and cursory reading. 
They need to have brought to them condensed knowl- 
edge of literature, reviews of books, readings from the 
great novelists and dramatists. They need to know 
something of magazines, of the work of editors, and 
of the stage. A few problem plays, and a few psycho- 
logical novels should be read. They need guidance, in 
other words, in the deluge of modern literature. 

Judged from all other standpoints, except that of 
college entrance, most of the prevalent high school 
work should be relegated to a minor part in the course. 
Though modern languages should take precedence 
at least of the classical studies, they are secondary to 
all content studies. They are too narrow and formal 
and touch too lightly the fundamental impulses of 
the adolescent ; they are too much influenced by social 
ideals of polite culture. Mathematics also, being for- 
mal, has a low value at this stage. 

Next to the English study, as outlined above, comes 
the science work. Its purpose should be first of all to 
teach love and knowledge of nature as a whole, and 
its method should be religious. The sciences chosen 
should be those that give breadth and depth of view 
rather than accuracy. The great frontier of the scien- 
tific field, where the greatest scientist and the amateur 
are both in a sense children together, must be revealed 
to the mind of the youth. 

The science work must always include the elements 
of astronomy. Geology and palaeontology should have 
a place, and must be largely field work, and full of 



320 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

dynamic and genetic ideas. Chemistry should be 
sifted for its genetic elements, and its many practical 
applications. Biology, too, in all its larger relations, 
should be included, and be taught with the greatest 
enthusiasm. In all this science work the youth must 
repeat the steps by which the race has come. He 
must not begin with the precise and the particular, 
but with the large and the general. The first stage 
is the mythic and literary ; then the history and genesis 
of ideas ; then the popular science stage, with all possi- 
ble contacts with daily life brought out ; next the utili- 
tarian in a broad sense, the application of all the 
great problems and discoveries to the most vital and 
important questions of public welfare, such as life, 
health, reproduction and disease. Last of all, but not 
for the high school age, comes the stage of pure sci- 
ence : the methods of formula, mathematical exactness, 
analysis, dissection, and classification. This last, high- 
est, and most abstract method is that which now pre- 
vails in all the scientific work of the high school, and 
is a result of college dominance, and concession to in- 
competent teaching. Teaching systematically is easy, 
and precision lightens the teacher's task. It covers up 
the teacher's ignorance and lack of resources. Drill 
and the methods of mind training allow group instruc- 
tion, with its setting of lessons and recitations and ex- 
aminations, but it is hard on the mind of youth. 

It must be remembered that the boy of high school 
age is a young utilitarian, and that his interests centre 
about large aspects of use. Therefore the studies 
suited to his age are motor. The practical setting 



THE HIGH SCHOOL 



321 



may be given at its best by arousing ideals of 
frontier life, colonisation, and commercial conquest. 
Large aspects of trade and commerce must be taught, 
and the science work in part be grouped about these 
interests. It must look forward to practical life, must 
inspire activity, and make use of the budding aggres- 
siveness and love of conquest in the mind of the youth. 
Such work, too, must be co-ordinated with athletics, 
and through this interest, be affiliated also with the 
teaching of morals and religion. At this age ideals 
are all in a state of flux. The enthusiasm is easily 
led from one field to another, and must be constantly 
kept alert. The whole work is incessantly to keep the 
mind in so stimulating and uplifting an environment 
that the enthusiasm shall constantly be led to higher 
and higher planes, preoccupying mind and heart until 
inner scources of control shall be developed and in- 
terest become stable and definitely directed. 

The high school age is one of great susceptibility 
to all social influences, of capacity to be educated by 
personality. Especially do youth at this age exert in- 
fluence upon one another. Therefore all work must 
be made social in every possible way, in order to use 
the great forces of the social motives. It should 
be active, and yet the mind be flooded constantly with 
new impressions, for the powers of absorption are 
even greater than those of expression. Most of all, 
youth needs religion and morals, and must have these 
influences. Indeed the whole spirit of the high school 
course should be that of enthusiasm for what is 
normal, for the age, in morals and religion. 



322 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

These are the most important problems of the whole 
school system, for if we could solve even the most 
pressing of them, and establish secondary education 
upon a sound basis, we should have a clue to all 
other work of education, and could work forward 
and backward from this centre until the whole course 
of development would be ordered in accordance with 
true principles of genesis. 

References. — 159, 162, 170, 172, 176, 185, 196, 232, 282. 



CHAPTER XXVII 

THE COLLEGE 

The first question to ask concerning the higher ed- 
ucation is, Who should go to college? The current 
practice in urging all youth to aspire to college has 
many dangers. There are many, both boys and girls, 
who ought never to go to college at all. If health 
be deficient, the overwork of college life, coming dur- 
ing the most plastive years of adolescence, may do 
an injury that nothing can later repair. Complete 
maturity may thus be prevented, and health sacrificed 
for that which is a very poor substitute — knowledge. 
This applies to girls, even more than to boys, for the 
injury to girls at this age is more far-reaching than 
to boys. Nor should one go to college unless there 
be more than average mental ability, and then not 
unless interests strongly tend toward intellectual pur- 
suits. Business and other forms of active life should 
draw those who have no decided intellectual tastes. 
If moral convictions are not strong, and if habits 
are not well established in the direction of good moral 
living, the college is no place for a youth. There are 
many temptations in college life; the college cannot 
create character where it does not exist. No boy 
should go to college simply because he has the time 
and the money. 

323 



324 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

College education falls during a period of life when 
the youth, representing a stage in the progress of the 
race in which the intellect began to be the chief sur- 
vival value, naturally and instinctively broadens out 
his culture at every point. The college, like the high 
school, should be complete in itself, following out 
its own ideals, serving one period of life in the best 
possible way. It should not be a link between the 
high school and university or professional school, but 
should stand apart, uninfluenced by the demands of 
later specialised work. It must invite to a leisurely 
development of this last stage of general culture, 
which should be prolonged and in a sense aimless. 

In college the purpose must not be the fitting defi- 
nitely for work ; there must not be too much specialisa- 
tion and accentuation of individualities. We must de- 
velop the domain in which we are all alike and have a 
common possession. The ideal should be decidedly the 
cultivation of extensive rather than intensive knowl- 
edge. The mind must still be stimulated at all points, 
its ripening delayed always, in order to allow heredity 
to do all its work, and to round out the individual in- 
tellectually and morally to a complete form. The col- 
lege should be for all who can profit by it. There 
should be no entrance examinations, but all should be 
admitted who are of character and age to profit by the 
studies and associations of college life. Many types 
of men will be provided for, and the test of progress 
should not be the amount learned; for many, not by 
nature students, will profit most by association with 
men ; and the learning of values in life will be the real 



THE COLLEGE 325 

education they will receive. In the ideal college, num- 
bers should not be large, for this is the age when indi- 
vidual perfection, the completion of each according to 
his capacities and limitations, is the ideal. Everything 
should be pervaded by a moral purpose, remembering 
that moral growth and progress in culture are of 
much more importance than acquisition of knowledge. 

The work of the college, then, is to delay maturity, 
while the mind is stimulated and moulded by high 
ideals and interests in such a way that the hereditary 
forces have opportunity to bring the individual to 
complete maturity. It is the function of every pro- 
fessor, whatever his department, to create interests, 
and to inspire ideals. Proper intellectual interests 
serve the purpose of preoccupying mind and habits 
until the powers of control take charge. If the youth 
fail of zest and ardour on a high plane, he is certain 
to seek it on a low plane ; so every intellectual interest 
must be considered as a possible psychological equiva- 
lent of an undesirable motive or habit. In this sense, 
everything done for college youth has moral signifi- 
cance. 

Personality is now in the foreground. Therefore 
the relation of student and professor should be more 
than that of teacher and pupil. The function of the 
teacher is the induction of youth into the mysteries 
of life, rather than the transmission of information. 
To the extent that academic teaching has lapsed from 
this ideal have disciplinary troubles increased; for 
just in proportion as the main interests of the student 
are outside the classroom the college is failing in its 



326 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

chief duty. This is the great danger to student life 
from excessively large numbers in a college which 
break up the normal relations between professor and 
student, and make the classroom work formal, and 
lacking in personal inspiration. This is the greatest 
evil of the college system. Great harm can be done 
by allowing instruction to lapse to a merely knowl- 
edge-imparting function, failing to inculcate ideals, 
and to keep the mind of the student open and curious 
in face of all great questions. Such teaching tends 
to make for an ideal in the past rather than in the 
future, for to learn what has been said and done is 
far easier than to live by ideals of the future, and 
demands an entirely different quality of enthusiasm. 
It is in the future that the college student naturally 
lives, and if the college fails to represent this spirit in 
its classrooms it lacks connection with the true na- 
ture of the student, and college and youth each goes its 
own way. 

One of the most prevalent and serious evils of the 
college work of the present time, one containing many 
others, is too close specialisation in teaching. Pro- 
fessors are too much concerned with the subject-matter 
of their courses, and too little with the true function 
of teaching. They are led away from interest in the 
student by the passion for systematising, technique, 
precision, and scholarship within their own depart- 
ments ; and they try to impart to the student the same 
professional attitude toward their subject that they 
themselves have. This is wrong, for it is a time when 
the schoolmaster and his methods and subject-matter 



THE COLLEGE 327 

are of minor importance. The work of the professor 
should be to go far afield and bring in the best of 
everything within his department, freshly studied, and 
enthusiastically presented. He should be full of the 
latest news of his science as well as its whole history, 
the lives of its heroes and great men, and its dramatic 
achievements. He must, if need be, brave the charge 
of superficiality and lack of system, if in order to 
be inspiring he must sacrifice something of precision 
and form. /His aim must be the mental awakening 
of his students. He should stimulate questions and 
problems, and answer but few of them. The test 
of his success is not the amount of knowledge he leaves 
in the minds of his students, but the state of their 
interests in things worth being interested in; that is, 
his effect upon their sense of values in life, and their 
zeal in adjusting themselves to them. 

When the wants of the college youth are thus under- 
stood radical changes needed in the curriculum come 
to the surface. Both method and subject-matter must 
point to the larger aspects of life. College work must 
centre in the moral subjects. It must, therefore, come 
into contact with the religious life and develop it. 
It must contain the right kind of philosophy. Ethics 
must connect with health; with problems of honour, 
mastery of self, and individual efficiency; with the 
interest in athletics. Those subjects that sweep over 
the greatest life surfaces : literature, the natural sci- 
ences, psychology, the philosophy of education (which 
involves an insight into all the values of life, and 
inculcates ideals of conduct in the interests of the 



328 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

future), must be drawn upon. Pedagogy must be 
presented as the summation of all theoretical and prac- 
tical sciences. It must be more broadly and more 
generally taught, and in such a way as to be the means 
of inspiring ideals of citizenship, parenthood, and so- 
cial altruism — lessons that are constantly needed by 
all. Music, which is the greatest of all educators of 
the emotions, must have a high and honoured place. 
It is the very language of the emotions, and the 
widest of all culture subjects. It must be taught 
broadly, and to all ; its history, and all its great works 
must be brought home to the student's interests in 
such a way as to elevate the present low standards that 
prevail. 

The religious needs of the college student are great 
and deep. Religion must be taught. The mind must 
be kept positive and affirmative of something, and 
not made merely negative and critical. For this rea- 
son a broad study of religion should be made, from 
the comparative and psychological, and not merely 
the historical standpoints. The spirit of the Christian 
religion must be implanted and conveyed as the adoles- 
cent ideal, and the life of Jesus taught as the story 
of adolescence and representative of the ideals of 
the race. Athletic work must be brought up to, and 
made a part of, the religious and moral attitudes. All 
physical development and sports must be raised to a 
higher plane, be intellectualised and moralised, and 
made the centre of courses in ethics, physiology, and 
biology. 

The social life of the student presents many prob- 



THE COLLEGE 



329 



lems of both theoretical and practical interest. We 
do not yet know how to direct it, nor how useful 
activities may be made to grow out of the great mass 
of raw material of energy which the youth expends in 
his free associations with his fellows. The social life 
is a form of exercise of many unformed interests. 
Imitation is strong and this is one factor of the interest 
in discussion and debate, in which the youth can 
practise the strength of his personality, and can try 
all styles, assume all sides of questions, and enlarge 
his experiences. College clubs, which are of almost 
every conceivable sort, show the wonderful fertility 
of the social consciousness at this age, and its prone- 
ness to inventiveness and differentiation of interests. 
In many ways we have yet to learn how to control 
this social instinct. Its expression in love of debate 
and controversy suggests an important problem, the 
regulation and stimulation of societies, and utilisa- 
tion of this spirit in the methods and matter of the 
classroom. There is much to be said in favour of 
the college organisations, especially the secret societies. 
In cultivating friendship intensively for a small group 
the youth learns lessons that are gained in no other 
way. Such social life broadens personality and teaches 
honour. Another problem is self-government. The 
fertility of the interest in organisation suggests the 
problem of directing the energy and interest in self -or- 
ganization to self-government. Thus far self-govern- 
ment of student bodies has not been entirely a success. 
In many ways the adolescent is still in need of author- 
ity, and the college environment does not set ideal con- 



330 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

ditions for freedom of conduct in every particular. 
Another direction in which the youth's social instincts 
may be made to yield great returns for education is 
athleticism, one of the deepest interests of the college 
age. For excess of restlessness and discontent, for 
tendencies to outbreak and revolutionary ideas, im- 
morality and low enthusiasms there is no cure so 
potent as the athletic interests. By the athletic spirit 
loyalty to the group and to the college is aroused, au- 
thority is made more easy, morals are benefited; and 
to the degree that the benefits can be extended to 
all the student body of the college is there a gen- 
eral improvement in every department of work. We 
have yet much to learn, and we are still far behind the 
English schools in our athletic spirit, for there the 
standing of the teams of a college is likely to be a good 
index of the intellectual status of its student body. 

A crucial point in the college, and a culmination of 
its training is the philosophy it teaches. The present 
tendency toward a reasoning mania in the college 
philosophy does violence to the nature of youth. The 
college man needs, above all else, a positive world view, 
not a critical one; his philosophy should never be al- 
lowed to detract from his enthusiasm for practical life, 
nor to interfere with his natural enquiring attitude to- 
ward the world of knowledge. The philosophy taught 
must be a living philosophy, and its main work is to 
outline each science in its place in a universe of 
knowledge. There should be more popularising of 
the great principles and most important results of 
each science, and every expert and specialist should 



THE COLLEGE 331 

have, as a part of his duty, to present his science as 
a chapter of the philosophy of youth. The whole 
story of the intellectual development of the race must 
be taught. When this is presented with inspiration and 
true insight into its value for youth, instead of being 
dry and formal, it becomes a fascinating romance. 

References.— 81, 82, 144, 146, 154, 172, 196, 263. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

THE UNIVERSITY 

Science is the greatest achievement of man, and 
the university, the home of science, is, therefore, the 
centre of man's highest interest. The function of the 
university is to keep alive the spirit of research, to 
infuse this spirit into all other departments of edu- 
cation and of life, and to keep all open to new ideals. 
The university thus stands for progress and the fu- 
ture more than does any other institution. It is not, 
however, the sole possessor nor the creator of the 
enquiring spirit. All childhood that is not spoiled by 
wrong education possesses it, and it is the end of 
right education to enable the child to carry this spirit 
on with him throughout life. Research is but a de- 
veloped and refined image of the wonder and curiosity 
of childhood. It is related to the awe and reverence 
of the religious attitude. It is the spirit of growth in 
the child : a spirit which, infused into the higher grades 
of school, where too often indifference creeps in, 
gives to the school a new life and growth. It is the 
spirit of individuality and of leadership. In the pro- 
fessor it is the soul of the artist who inspires and 
creates, and not of the scholar who merely knows. 
At adolescence it is the test of the youth's progress. 

33 2 



THE UNIVERSITY 333 

Then his part is not merely to learn, but to create ; to 
peer into the future, and to blaze out new trails. This 
spirit is the intellectual accompaniment of that move- 
ment which, on the emotional side, is expressed in 
the higher altruism and in conversion, and which is 
the key-note of adolescence. 

The greatest educational need of this country is a 
higher grade of university work and better university 
ideals. Our standard of scholarship, both of student 
and of professor, is still too low. We need a revival 
of science. The function of the university is to bring 
the student to the end of his intellectual development as 
a student, by taking him out to the frontier of knowl- 
edge, and directing him how to take a step into the un- 
known, whence he shall bring back new knowledge, 
and himself become an authority, and in some way an 
expert. Then he becomes mentally free and indi- 
vidual. Thus far our schools have been much more 
successful in disseminating the knowledge we already 
possess than in cultivating the spirit of research and 
in maintaining that attitude without which any system 
of education must degenerate, unless it is stimulated 
and refreshed from without. 

There must be at the top of every growing educa- 
tional system an university, founded upon the spirit 
of research. Here the method must be specialisation, 
and not merely scholarship. Self-activity of effort 
must now take the place of learning on the part of 
the student. He must not merely repeat nor con- 
firm what others have done, but he must, in a new 
way, expressing his own individuality, bring all his 



334 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

previous knowledge to bear upon a single point at 
which he can create new values in knowledge. Gen- 
eral culture and learning are a necessary preparation 
for this result, but no amount of general learning 
will fulfil the ideal of specialisation nor truly satisfy 
the spirit of research. Indeed receptive learning, if 
carried too far, will antagonise and kill this finest 
product of right education, and it is one of the chief 
criticisms justly made upon our colleges that they do 
precisely this thing. They overeducate by methods of 
passive learning, and do not prepare for the work of 
specialisation by keeping alive the spirit of enquiry. 

The university is for the few, and in every depart- 
ment of the school the best talent must constantly 
be kept making headway toward it. We must not 
think that such effort, and lives devoted to these 
ideals, are unpractical. Even the purest love of sci- 
ence for its own sake is not unpractical. Often the 
most theoretical problem yields in the end the most 
practical results. And out of the spirit and the 
achievements of the university, in times past, have 
grown all the higher results that have created stand- 
ards and furnished the most practical rules in all 
our higher professions, and in many other ways have 
made for progress in all departments of life. 

If the university is for the few, these few must 
have the greatest possible freedom. There should 
be free migration of students from one university to 
another, in order that young men may obtain pre- 
cisely that guidance most fitted to each individual. 
Every possible assistance must be offered, and every 



THE UNIVERSITY 335 

obstacle removed from the path of complete maturing 
of mental ability. Each university should hope to 
carry but one or a very few departments to the highest 
efficiency. In the university every student should ex- 
pect to help educate all his fellows, and to stimulate and 
keep alive interest in something for which he alone 
is responsible. When he enters into the university 
life the youth is no longer merely a learner. He is 
a sharer in the higher life of the intellectually compe- 
tent. 

In the university the lecture method, which has 
in many places been overdone, must be supplemented 
by more co-operative methods of learning. The labo- 
ratory — in which students and professors work to- 
gether, and where each student has individual attention 
— and the seminary, are the most natural situations 
for the ripening of the growing mind. The methods 
must be social to foster the highest specialisation. The 
crowning step of all is the completion of work and its 
publication, the giving to the world, in a permanent 
form, of something new to it, and valuable as a stone 
in the great edifice of learning. If this has been led to 
by the most pedagogic steps ; if the subject upon which 
the man has specialised was suited to him; if he has 
been able, not merely to accumulate facts, and put 
them together in a new way, but to create new 
thought ; if his personality has entered into his problem 
in such a way that he has grown while he worked ; if 
he has been able to combine industry with ability to 
speculate and go out in imagination and insight into 
new fields, and to see a bright vision of future work 



336 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

ahead — then man and work have been happily com- 
bined to produce that best of all achievements of an 
educational system — a true scholar. 

References. — 54, 83, 84, 85, 86, 152, 154, 171, 246, 261, 263, 
268, 274. 



CHAPTER XXIX 

THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 

One of the most pressing of educational problems 
in America is that of the training of teachers. No de- 
partment is so much in need of reform as the normal 
school. Throughout the lower grades, especially, 
teachers are not properly equipped for their work, 
either as regards knowledge of the subject-matter they 
teach or knowledge of the child. There is a lack 
of deep conviction on the part of teachers; they are 
too easily influenced by each new idea; they lack a 
philosophy of education, and want leadership to help 
them appreciate their dignity and rights. System and 
organisation tend to make matters worse, for always 
the tendency of a system is toward deterioration. Ex- 
perience of other countries and of our own shows that 
improvement never comes from within the system 
itself; for it always becomes formal and routine un- 
less inspiration is infused into it from without. There- 
fore all ideals of educational reform must arise at the 
fountain head of the educational system ; that is, in 
the university. Always it must be new thought aris- 
ing in the higher institution and working downward 
into the public school that must transform education. 
To mould education, therefore, it is necessary always 

337 



338 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

to take a far look ahead; to train educational leaders 
and produce educators who are open to influence by 
the best that is being done everywhere, and who can 
pass the new thought down the grades to the practical 
teacher. Nothing depends so absolutely upon the uni- 
versity as the lower grades of the public school. 

The training of the teacher, therefore, begins with 
the education of the university specialist. The first 
work is to broaden the outlook of all leaders of edu- 
cational work. There is no science large enough to 
include all the problems and view-points of education, 
and one of the most unfortunate conditions arises 
when any leader or system becomes wedded to any 
single philosophy, or becomes too single-minded for 
any one point of view. Pedagogy must hold itself 
open to influence from all sources whence anything 
can come that can be applied to the education of the 
young. The educator must roam far and wide, seek- 
ing his materials everywhere. And this must be the 
spirit in which the teacher must be trained for his 
work, and which must be passed on to the worker in 
every grade. Only in this way can progress continue 
to be made. 

One of the most prevalent faults, at the present 
time, in the training of teachers, is too much devotion 
to system. The philosophy of education upon which 
it is based is likely to be narrow, deductive, and formal. 
Such systems naturally pass on to the teacher formal 
and barren methods and the teacher imparts these 
same vices to the child's mind. These philosophies 
train the mind to dissect large wholes of knowledge, 



THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 339 

and make for over-precision, premature accuracy, ver- 
bal definition, logic chopping, formal steps, analyses 
and over-explanation. It is at its worst a pedantry 
which leads to a show of knowledge on the part of both 
teacher and pupil; which tends to shield ignorance, 
and to cover up lack of content by excess of form, 
and is detrimental to growth of mind. 

There is a possibility, even, of too much profes- 
sional training of a kind. What a teacher needs is not 
a system of pedagogy, but a deep love of knowledge, 
and a strong and quick feeling for childhood. If there 
must be a choice between an excess of formal training 
in pedagogy, and an entire lack of professional knowl- 
edge, the latter is better. It is easy for the teacher 
to magnify the rules, and thus to make everything 
she teaches unnatural and formal, to make knowledge 
intricate and to puzzle the child by artificial divisions 
of knowledge and conscious steps in imparting it. 
Better than all this is a few simple and easily taught 
rules, and a few dozen inspiring lessons on the his- 
tory of education, and as many on the nature of child- 
hood. 

Instead of formal philosophy, therefore, the centre 
of teacher-training should be the study of psychology 
conceived in its broadest aspect as the science of 
human nature, and especially as a study and inter- 
pretation of childhood. This is as necessary for the 
training of the teacher as acquaintance with iron and 
wood is for the engineer. Nothing can take the place 
of this point of view. The philosophies are obsolete, 
and abstract. The new experimental knowledge about 



340 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

the mind is too technical and too remote from teaching. 
No text-book is adequate. Even the genetic books 
are too much devoted to doctrine, and fail to get 
before the teacher the vast store of new knowledge. 
The new genetic psychology inspires breadth of view 
in the teacher, teaches respect for childhood and the 
workings of nature. The younger the child the less 
help the teacher can get from any of the old philoso- 
phies and the more from the new. Even the best 
of the old psychology fails in dealing with the young 
child, for it turns the mind of the teacher away from 
the child to the adult; it teaches irrelevant issues 
and gives presuppositions and ideals out of harmony 
with nature. 

Psychology for the teacher should be to a very little 
extent analytic or systematic, and it should not deal 
much with the fundamental principles of the science 
nor the connection between psychology and other sci- 
ences. It should be practical and genetic. 

The work should begin with physiology and hygiene ; 
studying such problems as air, light, heat, posture, 
nutrition, abnormalities, and defects. The practical 
problems of the kindergarten should be studied, with 
some reference to nursing and other physiological sub- 
jects. There should be something about heredity; 
about tests of eye, ear, and motor ability ; about mus- 
cles and their training and disorders. 

There should be much about play and the natural 
stages and nascent periods of all interests. There must 
be something about imitation, imagination, and a little 
about reason. The feelings, beginning with the fun- 



THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 341 

damental pleasures and pains, and passing to the study 
of fear, love, anger, pity, sympathy, and other emotions, 
must have a prominent place. 

The teacher needs much special knowledge about 
reading and number work, for if she does not know 
the mechanism of these processes, her work will be 
blind. The psychology of learning a language, the 
physiology and hygiene of writing, methods of draw- 
ing, processes involved in learning geography, the psy- 
chology of teaching history, of examinations and mark- 
ing, must all be touched upon. 

The laws of mental fatigue introduce another chap- 
ter. There must be something about attention and 
distraction, memory, habit, association. All these 
problems of mental development should be entered 
upon concretely, with much about individuals and the 
practical issues. The purpose should be to enlarge 
and develop the paternal and teaching instinct that is 
normally strong in every youth. Much should be 
taught by hints and suggestions, depending upon the 
native interest to absorb and assimilate what is so 
natural to all if it be properly presented. 

In part growing out of the psychological attitudes 
of child study, but in part related to other interests, 
practical and theoretical, is another group of prob- 
lems about which the teacher must be informed, if she 
is to take an intelligent part in the work of teaching. 
These include questions of school organisation, con- 
trol, legal aspects of the school, and discipline. Much 
of this work can be made more than merely formal 
and informational, if its points of contact with broader 



342 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

views of education and the problems of society are 
kept in view. 

Next to psychology the most vital part of the pro- 
fessional training of the teacher is the history of 
education, which more than anything else can con- 
vey high ideals and inculcate the professional spirit. 
The story of the great teachers must be brought home 
to the young novice, and the teaching vocation be 
made to appear in its true light as akin to, or part 
of, the parental. The teacher must be led to see that 
love for the young is the deepest human instinct, one 
in which every normal person must share. 

Most of those in training to be teachers need much 
more education in the fundamentals they are to teach, 
for the most common defect of the teacher is lack 
of knowledge. The teacher's knowledge must be rich 
and varied, rather than systematically arranged and 
tabulated ; and must be such as to appeal to the child's 
stage of mental growth. The ideal is specialisation 
both among normal schools and in the minds of teach- 
ers. Fewer subjects should be taught by one indi- 
vidual, and these more thoroughly known than is now 
common. Richness of mental content is all-important, 
and the dangers from too little knowledge are many. 
Mental dryness leads to formal methods, to analysis 
and over-systematising and consciousness of process, 
which always should be in the background, and should 
follow rather than precede acquisition of the art of 
teaching. 

All the work of the normal school should be made 
to centre in the model school. This, from its very 



THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 343 

nature, is the opposite of a practice school, for every 
teacher in it must be an expert and more or less of 
a specialist. All teachers should give courses in the 
regular work of training students and should also have 
leisure for special instruction. In the model school 
the young student must see, put into practice, the best 
ideas upon education, expertly carried out; and the 
apprenticeship of the young teacher should gradually 
be begun under the guidance of the expert. Then the 
student should go to the public schools to serve a 
further apprenticeship under older teachers, and if 
possible have some experience in work among de- 
fectives or in hospitals. These normal schools should 
confine themselves to the training of teachers for the 
grades, and should not undertake pedagogical training 
for high school work, which should be the function of 
the college department of pedagogy. 

The normal school needs more objective and illus- 
trative methods than are at present accessible to the 
student. There should be in each a museum where 
are kept maps, pedagogical devices of all kinds, charts, 
books, models, pictures in abundance, and lantern slides. 
This department should be extended, if possible, to 
be of service to teachers outside the school. Pic- 
tures, lantern materials, and other aids to teaching 
could be circulated and be of great assistance to teach- 
ers. 

In addition to the subjects now provided for in the 
training of teachers there should be special work in 
such topics as story-telling, which should be made 
one of the most important tests of ability to teach; 



344 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

and in preparation for which teachers should be re- 
quired to do much reading. Dancing and dramatic 
representation should be taught, and there should be a 
course in plays and games. More and broader teach- 
ing of music is needed, each teacher being required to 
sing, to play upon at least one instrument, to know 
something about the history of music, and much more 
than is usual about the best music for children. 

The college department of pedagogy and education 
has a broad field to occupy, for in a sense this subject 
cannot be regarded as a specialty at all, but as a 
summation of all the practical and theoretical wisdom 
of all the sciences, in touch with every other depart- 
ment, and drawing something from each. Rightly 
conceived and conducted, there is no other department 
in college that contains so many educational possibili- 
ties for all. 

The college pedagogical course should include, first, 
a history of education in the widest possible sense 
of the word, comprising the story of all departments 
from kindergarten to university and treating of all 
branches of the school system. It must study the the- 
ories and practices of all races in all times ; religious 
and secular institutions must be investigated — in fact 
all that has ever consciously been done for the child 
must be taken into account. 

Next in importance to the history of the subject 
comes the study of childhood and youth, not as sys- 
tematic psychology, or as a branch of philosophy, but 
taught concretely with attention upon those topics 
which are most practically valuable. The student 



THE TRAINING OF TEACHERS 345 

should know most about such topics as growth, devel- 
opment of motor functions, health, play, morality, re- 
ligion — each studied with reference to teaching in the 
secondary school. 

Third, comes the study of the educational values 
of all school topics, methods, organisation of work, 
problems of specialisation, co-education, the psychology 
of the teacher. In connection with the teaching of 
English, the child's whole process of linguistic devel- 
opment must be studied, the relations of foreign and 
modern languages and the vernacular in the curricu- 
lum, the values of each, and all the wider educational 
problems that are involved. 

In the same way all other topics of the curriculum 
must be studied : physics, algebra, zoology, the commer- 
cial subjects — each worked out in the broadest way, 
with reference to the growth and functions of both 
body and mind, and to other educational questions. 

In spite of the evident breadth of the field of peda- 
gogy in the college, there are many temptations to nar- 
rowness and omission of the more important work 
for the sake of including that which is less educa- 
tional. The professor of pedagogy is too likely to 
have, as a part of his duties, to gather students for 
the college, and to supervise more or less, and to keep 
in touch with, the secondary schools which feed his 
institution. Instead of spending time and energies 
upon these formal topics, his interests should more 
properly go to the cultural side of his subject. He 
should be in touch at all times with education in all 
grades, should know about all systems of education, 



346 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

and be freshly informed about all live topics. He must 
also carry on investigations for himself, if he is to 
have the right outlook as a teacher. 

Especially in the woman's college, where pedagogy 
is now in a state of neglect, there should be much more 
done in a broader way. Work in education should 
there be for all students, whether intending to teach 
or not. For not only is education a topic of so- 
cial importance, but in many of its aspects it is but 
a more general study of the parental functions. In- 
terest should be stimulated all along this line. Con- 
ception of the place of the young in the economy of 
society must be widened, and the dignity of the office 
of the care and training of children be impressed upon 
all. 

Thus conceived, it can be seen that education does 
not lack cultural material, and the reasons are plain 
why it should have a central place in college work, 
especially in the woman's college. It is related to 
all other topics, and in a sense it is a summarising 
and focussing of all other subjects upon the single 
theme which is of the most immediate importance to 
any generation, and by an understanding of which the 
moral and intellectual standing of individuals as well 
as nations must be judged. 

References.— 49, 83, 103, 177, 207. 



PART IV 

SPECIAL PROBLEMS 



CHAPTER XXX 

RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS 

It seems inevitable that religion must be less and 
less taught as such by the secular school, and therefore 
this all-essential part of the education of youth must 
fall more and more upon the religious institutions them- 
selves. To meet the problems successfully these insti- 
tutions must be willing to do as the secular school has 
already begun to do, study and interpret their culture 
material, not in its own interest, but in the interest of 
the child; and they must adapt it to his nature and 
stages of development. There is need of a broadened 
conception of the function of religion, a wider sympa- 
thy with other religions than our own, and willingness 
to learn of them in respect to methods, and even to use 
their culture material, if it be found to supplement 
ours. We must remember that our religion and our 
own Bible were created by a foreign race, in many 
respects different from ours in temperament ; and that 
we have not the traditions growing out of the childhood 
of our race that some nations have. We have no great 
epic nor mythology to give background and depth to 
our religious conceptions. The practical conclusion 
from such facts is that the culture material of our 

349 



350 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

religion needs adaptation to our own needs, especially 
to the needs of the child. 

Beginning with the Sunday School, there are already 
many suggested reforms that have grown out of the 
new applications of psychology to the study of the na- 
ture of the child. The Sunday School must be willing 
to learn from the child, and must follow and not try 
to force and lead interest, in this respect placing itself 
quite on the level with the secular school. Usually 
the Sunday School teacher is too eager to impart to 
the child the adult's conceptions of religion, feeling 
that the truth has but one form for all. This is far 
from true, and in almost no other field is it so neces- 
sary for the child to learn what is suited to his stature. 
Several principles, suggesting changes in the Sunday 
School, can be laid down. These are : 

i. The Old Testament should predominate over the 
New for boys and girls before the age of adolescence. 

2. The New Testament is chiefly for the stage of 
adolescence. 

3. In teaching about Jesus his humanity should first 
be taught, with reticence concerning his deity and 
concerning all the supernatural elements in the Gos- 
pel. 

4. Stories should predominate in the work of teach- 
ing, especially in work with young children. 

5. Select tales and other matter having moral bear- 
ing, coming from other sources than from the Bible, 
should be used. 

6. Nature should have some place as a means of 
developing religious sentiments. 



RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS 351 

7. The purely intellectual instruction should centre, 
first, about the Old Testament and then during the 
first years of adolescence about the New Testament. 

8. The miraculous should have a prominent place. 

9. The complete and ideal Sunday School should 
make provision for mature and cultivated young men 
and women. 

An excellent clue to the ^vhole principle of Sunday 
School work is to be found in the fact that the Bible 
symbolises life. It is the story of the creation and de- 
velopment of man, through many stages, to maturity 
and old age; and in general the order in which the 
story is told is the order in which it should be taught. 
The one most important method of training is the 
story. But it must also be known that this story of 
the Christian religion, great as it is, is not the com- 
plete fulfilment of the religious needs of the child. 
The mind of the child is greater than the story of 
any religion. First of all, there must be a solid back- 
ground of nature love and worship. This important 
stage in the development of the religious life must 
not be entirely lost. There is nothing that so stimu- 
lates awe, reverence, and the feeling of dependence as 
nature love. This is a spontaneous sentiment of every 
natural heart. Every object of nature has somewhere 
been worshipped : forest, clouds thunder, and moun- 
tains played a great part in shaping the early religion 
of the Hebrews ; and by the same means the instincts 
of the growing child may best be trained toward re- 
ponsiveness to the influences of religion. The child 
who has not felt the power of nature will be likely 



352 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

to build his religion upon the sand, for it will lack 
the primeval instincts out of which religion has been 
created. 

For the same reasons much culture material that 
is not contained in the Bible should be freely used in 
the earlier stages of religious teaching. Many moral 
lessons, especially, not found in our own Bible, but 
taught in those religions that represent more nearly 
the childhood of man, should be included. Much, 
too, of the old heroic literature may be found use- 
ful. Lives of the Saints, tales from Homer, tales 
of the Edda, some of Plato's myths, and many other 
stories, are directly religious in their influence, and 
supplement the teachings of the Bible at important 
points. 

The child's mind is objective. He loves the strong 
and dramatic, and whatever excites the imagination. 
He wants action, not feeling, nor sentiment. There- 
fore the old Bible stories; stories of Goliath, Abra- 
ham, Moses, Saul, David, Joshua, Balaam, Elijah, 
Elisha, and Jacob appeal wonderfully to the young, 
and at a certain stage are educative far more than 
any other material of our religion. The child him- 
self moves in just such a world, full of excitement, 
of interests in persons, in punishment and external 
authority. He needs just such a God as these strong 
stories of the Old Testament teach; a stern, just God, 
capable of anger and punishment. So suited is all 
this to the child at a certain age that he needs almost 
no other form of religious instruction, if this be prop- 
erly presented to him — the narrative strongly felt 



RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS 353 

and vividly told, the personality of the teacher, and 
especially moral explanation and exhortation left for 
the most part in the background. Myth and miracle 
may be left to do their work upon the fancy and senti- 
ment of the child with no fear that the impression will 
lack depth. Especially, to present in the early years of 
childhood the themes of conversion and all the later 
sentiments of love as found in the New Testament, is 
certainly wrong. It is precocious, turns the mind to- 
ward introspection, and worst of all, prevents the 
deeper interest in these themes when they are ap- 
proached later under the impulse of feeling. 

The error involved is precisely that of the Froe- 
belians in the secular school; and the attempts to 
introduce their methods in the form of kindergartens 
in the Sunday School makes this all the more clear. 
Zeal for the higher truths of religion makes the teacher 
too eager to have the little child understand what is 
abstract and quite beyond his years. The same spirit 
prevents, too, a much needed change of attitude to- 
ward his work on the part of the teacher. The secular 
school has awakened to the need of a broader content 
in its teaching. The Sunday School needs it quite 
as much, and it is here that the interest in imparting 
the abstract truths of religion does most harm. The 
teacher relies upon fervor, instead of intellectual prep- 
aration for his work, and the result is mental starva- 
tion on the part of the child. The teacher's mind is 
not laden with the kind of materials the child most 
wants and most needs. Instead of feeding the mind 
there is much forcing of memory, teaching of cate- 



354 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

chisms with its phraseology of abstract truth which 
cannot stimulate the mind, inculcation of dogmas, 
which belong only to the adult stages of religion. 
There is too much study of printed matter, and too 
little oral narrative; too much pointing of the moral 
of everything; too little suggestion. The teaching is 
too complex, with too much emphasis upon God's love, 
and too little upon God's acts. There is too much of 
learning of the details of archaeology, history, phi- 
lology ; too many notes, lessons helps, and even often- 
times too many pictures, which to a certain extent 
may hamper the child's far more adequate imagina- 
tion. 

When adolescence comes, the greatest work of the 
Sunday School is to help to cultivate the emotions that 
are then born, and to lead them to religious expres- 
sion. The youth must, in a word, be led to an in- 
terest in that which is most worthy to be loved; and 
religion is the only complete method of accomplishing 
this change. Now is the time to teach the life of 
Jesus which before need have been emphasised only 
in the themes of Christmas and Easter. There is 
no career in all history so great in effect upon 
the adolescent as that of Jesus. First, the human 
aspect of it should be taught, and especially the more 
abstract and theological questions of the Trinity and 
the like must not now be introduced. It is not time 
to examine, but to absorb and imitate. Jesus must 
be given a fixed place in the affections of the youth 
first of all; and turning the interest toward the phil- 
osophical questions of his nature certainly prevents 



RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS 355 

this, as does the rationalising of any emotion by in- 
terfering with its natural expression and force. 

In the higher grades of religious teaching, especially 
in the theological school, there is need of a broader 
study of the human mind, and less, relatively, of 
theology. Psychology has now the most promise as 
an introduction to the philosophy of religion, and the 
study of religion from the standpoint of the nature 
and needs of the growing human mind opens up a 
deeper interpretation of everything religious than any 
other method; in fact, it puts religion beyond the 
reach of purely historical and logical criticism and 
establishes positive truths which cannot be refuted. 
Were there more study of human nature in the re- 
ligious institutions and less of abstract, speculative, 
and dogmatic treatment of the problems of divinity, 
better teachers and preachers would be produced, and 
religion would be experienced and taught in a way 
better adapted to the needs of youth. These schools 
tend to close questions in the minds of students, rather 
than to stimulate enquiry ; and they establish early atti- 
tudes toward all religious questions, which make an end 
of progress and growth. They teach those parts of 
religion that are special and individual and open to 
objection and controversy, and fail to inculcate those 
religious truths that are universal and incontrovertible. 
Theological students need to be taught a broader sym- 
pathy with all religions to enable them to rescue and 
bring into their own religion the elements from others 
which would strengthen it. This can be done only by 
teaching the great ethnic religions comparatively, with a 



356 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

knowledge of the psychology of racial development. 
There is need of stronger and simpler preaching from 
the pulpit along the lines of the old faith. The new 
scientific attacks upon religion have made it argu- 
mentative and apologetic and have put it on the de- 
fensive. We need stronger preaching of sin, and the 
old doctrines which are every one justified by the 
new psychological conceptions of religious needs and 
truths. 

Among religious institutions such organisations as 
the Young Men's Christian Association fill an im- 
portant place, if they are true to their opportunities. 
They stand between the purely religious and the 
purely secular institution. Their danger is that they 
will forget their religious function, and undertake too 
broad a work, by entering into too many civic and edu- 
cational activities, and losing sight of religion. Broad 
intellectual centres of growth they need to be, but the 
intellectual activities must be in the service of their 
religious mission. They should stand for ideals, and 
their function is to aid youth in passing through the 
periods of stress in adolescence. They must extend 
their influence into all the fields of practical religion, 
must teach morality, patriotism, sentiments of honour, 
sexual hygiene and morality. They must protect 
youth, and maintain the highest ideals, as a defence 
against the influences of a materialistic and industrial 
age. 

Another important problem of religious education, 
which must be considered from the standpoint of the 
religious institution, is the function of Sunday. Sun- 



RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS 357 

day has not only a religious function to perform, but 
the weekly rest is grounded upon deep physiological 
needs. To meet these it must be freed from a narrow 
conception which in the past has hedged the day about 
with restraints, and prevented it from being in the 
best sense a day of rest. On Sunday men should be 
whole men, and rest from the special activities of 
the week. Therefore the Sunday must open oppor- 
tunity for breadth of culture. Rest must be not idle- 
ness from activity, but change and recreation, for in 
the healthy body and mind activity is more restorative 
than is mere rest. On Sunday one must be able to 
look forward, backward, and around in a larger way 
than during the working days; to come face to face 
with great elemental questions of life, duty, family, 
society; to forget cares, and to come into touch with 
all the uplifting factors of environment. Libraries, 
reading rooms, parks, museums, art galleries and all 
such places of recreation and instruction should be 
freely opened; and all innocent forms of recreation, 
amusement, and exercise should be permitted. 
Churches cannot be filled by making the Sunday life 
out-of-doors uncomfortable and restrained, but on the 
other hand a wholesome Sunday will aid the work of 
the churches. 

The church does not, as a rule, extend its influences 
far enough into the week. There is need of closer 
union on the part of denominations to provide religious 
and moral instruction and environment during all the 
week. They should lay aside their differences in doc- 
trine, and try to regain some of their old function of 



358. GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

leadership of youth in good living. The doors of the 
churches should be open to more week-day uses, in the 
interest of a secular religion, which shall foster every 
good motive, and utilise all good-will and right senti- 
ments. Especially may this non-doctrinal religion be 
at one in preaching a religion of physical health and 
physical conscience. It may promote interest in athlet- 
ics, and in out-door life, not only for their own sakes, 
but for their effect upon all higher functions of intel- 
lect and feeling. This is one of the most promising 
fields of religious influence, for in it is the possibility 
of increasing zest for all good things. But no mere 
secular interest is sufficient. It all needs the spirit of 
religious ideals, for in the life of youth there is nothing 
that can take their place. 

References. — ioo, 140, 165, 168, 196, 199, 215, 216, 227, 
256, 267, 270. 



CHAPTER XXXI 

THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS 

The education of girls is one of the most profound, 
and as yet one of the most perplexing and unsolved 
problems of education, and of civilisation. We under- 
stand the girl far less than we do the boy, and yet her 
needs are greater, and more depends upon her right 
education. The problem rests for the most part upon 
biological considerations. The test is the effect upon 
heredity, and more immediately the result upon the 
health of the individual. The purpose of education, 
whether of boy or girl, is to bring each individual, ac- 
cording to his kind, to the fullest possible maturity, and 
to develop in each those ideals by which the interests 
of the future generation will best be served. Judged 
by these tests a very prevalent ideal of woman's edu- 
cation is certainly radically wrong. This asserts, as 
a fundamental principle, the equal rights of the sexes 
to education. It favours co-education of boys and 
girls by the same methods and in the same curriculum. 
In this spirit the woman's college has been made in 
the image of the man's, and the girl has been influ- 
enced to accept, as the highest ideal, that of intellectual 
culture, mastery of a special field of learning, self- 
support, and independence. 

359 



360 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

The biological view of education emphatically asserts 
that this is wrong. The deepest instinct of woman 
is to transmit life, and the completion of this func- 
tion by the training best suited to perfect it, and to 
establish it as an ideal, is the only way perfect individ- 
ual health can be secured. Health for the individual 
and normal service to the race are fruits growing upon 
the same stem. Those who claim equal rights for girls 
and boys to all the methods and subjects of the curric- 
ulum fail to see that the nature of the boy and of 
the girl is fundamentally different. It is a question 
whether boy and girl should ever have precisely the 
same education, but the problem is of less importance 
before puberty than after. But from puberty on there 
are great differences in every trait in the two sexes, dif- 
ferences that have increased from savagery to civilisa- 
tion, and to establish which there is every indication 
that nature is striving. These differences are mental as 
well as physical. Woman is more generic than man; 
that is, she tends less to specialisation of activity, and 
presumably should not be encouraged to attempt spe- 
cialisation, which is the natural end and aim of a boy's 
education. The woman is more intuitive, less dis- 
cursive, and has a richer emotional life. She is more 
religious, less conservative and less radical. The func- 
tions of reproduction are a greater part of life in the 
female, and more of the mental and the physical char- 
acteristics centre about it. In school, girls are more 
easily imposed upon than are boys, they are more eas- 
ily led to spurious interests which antagonise normal 
instinct and health, and thus their attitudes do not so 



THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS 361 

clearly guide the teacher. As regards methods of 
learning the girl is far more docile in subjects that 
starve the mind for lack of content, and which over- 
emphasise form, than is the boy. She is more sus- 
ceptible to many kinds of influence which interfere 
with the perfect growth and performance of organic 
functions, and is more easily started on the road to 
degeneration. The very fact that the female is 
charged more than. the male with the task of preserv- 
ing what has been gained and established in the race 
indicates her difference of attitude toward the new 
and the variable. 

All this shows that the ideal of education that de- 
mands the same culture for the sexes is wrong. The 
biological view clearly teaches that the two sexes must 
be complementary, each to the other; that each must 
round out a life suited to its own purposes ; and that, 
naturally, the methods of education for boys and girls 
will be very different. For either sex over-emphasis 
upon purely mental development may do harm, but it 
is peculiarly vicious in the girl's education. Such an 
ideal leaves the emotions and instincts untrained, neg- 
lects physical culture, and with its systems of marks 
and examinations unduly excites the spirit of competi- 
tion. The method that thus hastens mental develop- 
ment along a few special lines, and which interferes 
with normal development of the deeper parts of the na- 
ture, is the cause of much of the ill-health from which 
girls in high school and college so often suffer. Ex- 
cessive intellectualism inculcates wrong ideals about 
life, and leads the girl away from the simple plain life 



362 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

of home, and the ideals of motherhood and wifehood, 
without which she is certain to be neither morally nor 
physically a complete woman. 

It appears certain that from now on the right of 
woman to the highest education will be conceded all 
along the line. The work must be to see that it be 
high in the truest sense. If woman is to have the 
highest education possible for her, it certainly will not 
be precisely like a man's, even when she takes the same 
subjects and specialises upon the same themes. This 
higher education need not be lacking in intellectual 
elements, but purely intellectual culture can never be an 
adequate ideal for the woman. We hear far too much 
of the ideal of independent support. This is the prin- 
ciple openly professed by many who advocate educa- 
tion for girls in the higher branches. They maintain 
that a girl must be fitted for life like a man, and then 
if motherhood or wifehood come, she can still find a 
use for her culture; and will be able, on account of 
her college education, to take a place in the community 
higher than she otherwise would. The very opposite 
is the better way. The girl must be trained for wife- 
hood and motherhood first of all, and then, if it so 
happen that she become independent and self-support- 
ing, there are many callings in which her culture will 
find expression and be socially valuable. The bio- 
logical idea demands that the education of the boy and 
the girl, instead of being precisely alike in content 
and method, should often and in many particulars be 
diametrically different. The two should not be en- 
couraged to imitate and grow to be like one another, 



THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS 363 

but all natural traits in each must be brought out, so 
that, both in society and in all domestic relations, one 
shall supplement the other. Such considerations from 
biology must weigh against all matters of economy 
in conducting schools alike for the two sexes. The 
interests of the sexes are so different, and the methods 
to be employed so divergent, that to hamper either sex 
by binding it down to the ways of thought and action 
of the other is very uneconomic. The girl, if brought 
too strongly into competition with the boy, is sure to 
be injured both in health and in ideals, and the boy is 
equally hampered in his growth. 

After the age of twelve, co-education begins to be 
questionable, and seems to violate a custom, based upon 
a human instinct, and so universal that it must have 
some significance for us — that is, of segregation of 
the sexes at puberty. Our violation of this has come 
about accidentally. When the need arose for higher 
education for girls, the only schools to which they 
could be sent were the boys' schools. In the home the 
two sexes naturally segregate. Brothers have their 
boy companions and sisters play with girls. They play 
different games. Their tastes are different. The boy 
of twelve is a utilitarian; he craves responsibility and 
initiative. The girl is more docile. Both are harmed 
by being taught together. The school ignores these 
differences, though they pervade every mental func- 
tion ; attention, memory, habits of study are all differ- 
ent in the two sexes. Already at the high school age 
the girl of the same age begins to show greater ma- 
turity than the boy. She is superior in understanding ; 



364 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

the boy excels in everything motor, and he therefore 
requires more active methods in his education. The 
boy represses the girl ; in his presence her sentimental- 
ity fails to get free expression. The girl represses the 
boy ; and he cannot act out his crude budding instincts. 
Different methods are needed in teaching boys and 
girls the same subject. In botany, for example, the 
boy does better at work with the microscope, and the 
girl is interested in plant lore, and in the popular as- 
pects of the science. 

As adolescence progresses there should arise be- 
tween the sexes a subtle tension and restraint. Pro- 
longed familiarity wears down this tension, which is 
normally a powerful influence, both for moral and 
for intellectual growth. To the boy at this time 
the girl should seem somewhat apart and ideal. There 
must not be love before its time, and the sexual pas- 
sions must be diverted in every way by physical activ- 
ity and intellectual interest until maturity is completely 
established. Girls, too, need the same segregation. 
The constant society of boys is too stimulating. They 
need the calmer influences of their own sex. It is 
natural to the girl thus to withdraw from the other 
sex. She instinctively shuns too complex and exciting 
an environment, responding to a need of a more plastic 
emotional life, which makes it harder for her to ignore 
harmful influences and select what is needed for her 
best development. Girls, educated with boys, are very 
likely to acquire boys' ideals of life and to lament their 
sex and its limitations. Too often the woman teacher 
encourages this and herself imparts such ideals to girls. 



THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS 365 

She tries to be less romantic, less emotional, becomes 
more thoughtful and more regular. This is wrong, 
for it is girl's nature to be sentimental and romantic, 
and whatever represses these normal moods is harm- 
ful; as harmful as the refining influence which the 
school, taught by women and largely devoted to girls' 
ideals, is for the boy. True virility at this age will 
not take a high polish, and effeminate influences are 
bad for the boy. 

The remedies for the existing state of affairs are 
these. There must be a freer elective system in the 
high schools. Spontaneous interests must be allowed 
expression. The nature of the child must lead and 
education must follow and watch for indications. 
High schools for girls must be multiplied, and methods 
of teaching must be worked out more fully. Already 
there are many indications of girls' needs in such sub- 
jects as botany, biology, and chemistry. There should 
perhaps be also differentiation among girls' schools, 
providing for those who are determined to be prepared 
for self-support, a different curriculum and method 
from that given those who would be trained for domes- 
tic life. The ideal of competition between the sexes 
must be totally abandoned. There is no rivalry be- 
tween the sexes, for their purposes in life are too differ- 
ent to allow it ; and to believe there is, will work great 
hardships and create great evils, not only to education, 
but to social ideals as well. 

The question of the ideal of the woman's college, 
what its purpose should be, and the effect of co-educa- 
tional life upon fulfilment of this purpose, are most 



366 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

important themes of the higher education. The bio- 
logical view alone sees clearly what the true purpose 
of the woman's college should be. Its function is to 
develop complete women, and the method by which this 
is accomplished is the training for domestic life in the 
home ; for wifehood, motherhood, and in a large sense, 
for teaching and philanthropy. The current ideal of 
the woman's college is a violation of the biological. 
In the woman's college that is dominated by the ideal 
of self-support and independence, there is much book- 
ishness, hard grinding study, specialisation, a too 
broad and heterogeneous and exciting social life — all 
these violating fundamental traits of the feminine 
mind. The results are likely to be overtaxed strength, 
and over-development of intellect at the expense of 
physical and mental health. There is too little of 
training of the intuitions in a natural environment, too 
much complication of the feelings by reflection and 
examination of reasons. It is not necessary that the 
biological ideal thwart the highest development of the 
intellect, nor prevent specialisation in any department 
for the few for whom such a life is fitting ; but to en- 
courage all to strive to reach these heights is the wrong 
principle in the colleges for women. The ideals of 
wifehood and motherhood should be held up first and 
most strongly, and those of scholarship be made sec- 
ondary. That which is eternally feminine must be 
kept in the foreground. Discipline and sympathy must 
be put before aggressiveness and the spirit of reform 
and self-support. Good manners, correct, well-in- 
formed taste, the feminine side of everything, even 



THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS 367 

of science, must be emphasised. Culture must be hu- 
manistic. Study must not be too analytic and minute. 
The spirit must not be competitive, and examinations 
have but a small place. There must be leisurely study, 
and slow progress, rather than haste and crowding of 
many interests. In all subjects broad sympathies must 
be the aim rather than criticism. Therefore much 
logical philosophy and epistemology are not best for 
women. A philosophy in which human nature is the 
centre is better. The work in English should be study 
of literature sympathetically, in its relations to life, 
and not a study of words and forms, as is so often the 
method. In science, too, there must be general inter- 
est and knowledge, rather than exact methodology and 
drill. The genetic, the practical, and the personal 
sides of science, rather than the abstract, are needed, 
and the aim should not be high scholarship as such. 

Many of the errors of the new ideals of woman's 
higher education are involved in, or are the outcome 
of, the co-educational methods. There are many rea- 
sons why segregation of girls during the college age is 
the better way. The college girl is much nearer ma- 
turity, mentally and physically, than is her male fellow- 
student. Too much association with men of her own 
age weakens her respect for the masculine nature, and 
helps to turn the mind toward the single career. She 
fails to see that the men will continue to develop after 
her growth is completed; and she readily thinks her 
own present superiority in judgment, her greater ear- 
nestness and stability of character, her better insight 
into human nature, her keener perceptions, and better 



368 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

memory and associative power, indicate permanent dif- 
ferences between the sexes. This is far from being 
the case, for in the later years of his develop- 
ment, the boy will greatly change for the better, 
if he develops normally. These differences in the na- 
ture and needs of the sexes are so many and so great 
that nothing less than radically different courses and 
methods will sufficiently recognise them. The need of 
difference in training increases, rather than the reverse, 
during the college years. Girls require more work 
with text-books and more recitation. Boys are better 
at research. Girls thrive upon the mass-training plan, 
but boys famish if thus treated. Boys wish more of 
the practical and experimental. 

Of course, in the matter of college education, girls 
differ greatly as individuals in their needs. Many 
should not go to college at all, and the mistake of ur- 
ging college education for a girl who is not fitted to 
receive it is even worse in its effects than in the case of 
the boy. Colleges for women differ greatly and fill the 
needs in different degrees and ways for different types 
of temperament and ability. Both the girl and the 
college should be studied carefully before a decision 
is made. Colleges differ much in their moral re- 
straints, in their social life, and in intellectual oppor- 
tunities. The co-educational college differs from the 
woman's college. Much depends upon securing the 
right environment. The girl goes to college at an age 
when she is most susceptible to influences that make for 
development of character and mind, and if these in- 
fluences are the best, she will grow by leaps and 



THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS 369 

bounds. The curriculum itself is but one of the 
educative factors. The quality of the college at- 
mosphere, the ideals of the professors, and the char- 
acter of the institution as a whole are of great im- 
portance. 

Not even in the university and the professional 
school can there be entire eradication of sex differ- 
ences. The feminine mind is more concrete than the 
man's and for the most part the woman takes little 
interest in the purely abstract subject. This is true 
of the theoretical aspects of such subjects as aesthetics 
and ethics. In some of the experimental fields women 
have shown great ability, especially in psychology and 
in other subjects that closely touch life. In studies 
of animals, plants, and primitive life she excels. As 
a laboratory assistant she is often ideal: resourceful, 
accurate, patient, and sometimes independent. As a 
compiler of literature, in a field in which she is inter- 
ested, she is peerless. She readily masters the meth- 
ods of the library, and in all work of studying authori- 
ties and the making of bibliographies, she excels. 

The ideal school for girls is one of the most important 
problems for the future of education, for in many ways 
the future of the race depends upon the woman more 
than upon the man. Health and the feeling life are 
most important, and far more difficult to train than the 
intellect. Therefore environment in the widest sense 
is of the greatest moment. The problem is first of all 
to construct an ideal environment for physical health 
and the training of the emotional life. Schools for 



37o 



GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 



girls should be in the country, where the profound in- 
fluences of nature can best be commanded. Out-of- 
door life should be encouraged, and there should be 
plenty of provision for sports, and everything that 
fosters nature love, and healthy out-of-door life. In 
dancing there is a great resource for health training 
and education of the emotions. In the past the dance, 
in its natural forms as folk and national dance, has 
been a school both of religious and moral feeling. It 
is related to the drama, to song, to speech. It makes 
the best of all systems of physical culture for the girl. 

Manners, using the term in a broad sense, must be 
given an important place in the girl's school. Not 
only is the desire to be pleasing a natural aim of the 
girl, but this is the centre of many higher developments 
and refinements of feeling and action. The best ideals 
of ladyhood should be held up, the refinement which 
is the essence of educated womanhood must be devel- 
oped, and manners must be taught, even the details of 
etiquette and custom. 

Religion must have a place in all women's education, 
for it is the motive that effects the transformation 
from the selfish to the altruistic life, without which 
even health cannot be complete. In this the order of 
the racial development must be heeded, for it is futile 
to try to teach religion in any other way. Refined 
ideals must not be inculcated too early. First comes 
the Old Testament, illustrating virtue, duty, devotion, 
and self-sacrifice; later, the New Testament, the ideal 
life of Jesus. In teaching girls, the aesthetic elements 
of its religion, its forms, and all the factors which can 



THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS 371 

appeal to the sense of the beautiful, must be made 
much of. 

Emphasis must always be upon those subjects and 
methods that train the intuitions and feelings. Those 
subjects that relate to conduct, and connect with that 
which in a given stage of growth is, from the girl's 
point of view, vital and practical are to be brought to 
the front. Nature study must be made an entrance 
to much that is intellectual, and be made to widen 
sympathies and deepen emotions. Nature study for 
the girl ought to be less of the laboratory and more 
of the field, than in the case of the boy. Formal study 
of physics, chemistry, and mathematics, has but a 
small place in the ideal education. Geology, biology, 
and astronomy must be taught, especially in their his- 
torical and personal aspects, always the larger princi- 
ples first and most emphasised. Botany is the best of 
all sciences for women, and if it be properly presented, 
can be made truly educative of both mind and heart. 
Plant-lore and all poetic aspects of the subject need 
emphasis. Its history, the story of its great men and 
events must be told. Field work is to be the dominant 
method and take precedence over all work with text, 
microscope, and analysis. The great themes of life 
must be brought out vividly, and all practical implica- 
tions be emphasised. The moral effect and application 
ought always to be kept in mind. Zoology, in like 
manner, should follow the needs of the physical and 
moral nature of girls. It must treat of live things in 
their relations to human life, rather than of the dead 
specimen. It should begin with that which is near 



372 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

at hand; with domestic animals, their care and use; 
and all the practical aspects must be brought out. 
Next in science comes the study of the life of man, be- 
ginning with what is primitive in the race, and with the 
young of the human species. This ought not to be pre- 
sented in a systematic manner, but must follow along 
lines of greatest interest. Upon this basis history may 
follow, with prominence given to moral aspects, to the 
vivid and dramatic, to lives of individuals. Dates, 
politics and wars need to be kept in the background. 
In sociology the larger theories and problems and the 
great movements in human life need to be brought for- 
ward, rather than minute and exact and statistical 
studies. Stories of great reforms; problems of so- 
ciety, home, church, state, and school ; and philanthrop- 
ical movements and ideals are to be the main in- 
terests. 

The main purpose of the teaching of all art should 
be to cultivate appreciation, and the powers of per- 
ception, and there should be but little training of ex- 
pression in art forms unless there is genuine talent. 
In literature myth, poetry, and drama should lead, and 
emphasis be put upon expression in the native tongue. 
Greek, and perhaps Latin, should be entirely excluded, 
for in these subjects a little knowledge comes at the 
cost of too much unnatural toil, and at too great a sac- 
rifice of time and energy which could be more profitably 
spent. Modern languages should be taught by con- 
versational methods, and by teachers native to the lan- 
guages. 

Of ordinary philosophy there need be but little. Of 



THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS 373 

the philosophical subjects psychology is the main centre 
and interest. This should be taught genetically and 
the love of childhood and youth, rather than the love 
of science, be made the motive. The sentiments and 
instincts must be studied more than the technical prob- 
lems of perception and intellect. Ethical studies grow 
out of these points of view and must treat of every- 
day problems of the moral life and be but little theoret- 
ical. 

Domestic science should be taught in every girl's 
school. The work should be practical, and the theme 
be the ideal home, which the laboratory should repre- 
sent so far as possible. It should contain all the ap- 
pointments of the house; there should be training in 
nursery, kitchen, and dining-room, in the care of the 
house, and in all the details of household economy and 
aesthetics. 

The course in pedagogy is to be based upon the 
ideals of motherhood, and will include the history of 
teaching and a course in child-study, both theoretical 
and practical. The care of the child should be taught 
in detail, with as much practical work as possible. 
Properly taught this training in pedagogy may be said 
to be the centre of the education of the girl, for every- 
thing else may be grouped about it and taught with 
reference to it. Its aim is moral: the development of 
the girl through natural steps to feminine perfection. 
This, better than anything else, expresses the ideal of 
woman's education, and places it in sharpest contrast 
to the other ideal, so often held, which puts intellect 
before feeling, and which aims to make women special- 



374 



GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 



ists in their interests and abilities — which is precisely 
what nature has at every step tried to combat. The 
two main callings of the woman, closely related to one 
another — teaching and motherhood — should provide 
the impetus for most of her higher culture. About 
these everything else may revolve, and all intellectual 
achievement may be acquired. Women have true 
genius as teachers, and every girl should have such an 
educational environment that this natural interest and 
instinct may be utilised, both for her moral training, 
and for her higher mental culture. 

We may say, in conclusion, that the need of woman's 
education, to-day, is based upon simple biological and 
common-sense principles. The homely German say- 
ing that the interests of women centre in kitchen, 
clothes, children, and church is not far wrong, when 
it is rightly understood. Indeed the world to-day is 
calling woman back to these basic interests. In 
woman's education everything that does not somehow 
pertain to these things is of little worth. All that does 
not in the end contribute to a better knowledge of 
home, children and religion is wrong, for the future 
of the race depends upon continued progress along 
these very lines. 

From almost the beginning of school the education 
of women should proceed with these principles central 
and cardinal. School should keep in touch at every 
point with actual life, rather than have, as its ideal, 
preparation for life at some future time. The girl 
must first of all know and do practical things, and the 



THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS 375 

science of these things must be later and secondary. 
The realisation of something like this, we may say, is 
the chief need of the world to-day. 

References.— 190, 197, 205, 211, 235, 240, 243, 271, 277, 292. 



CHAPTER XXXII 

RACIAL PEDAGOGY 

The parallelism, drawn in recent years between the 
individual and the race, which has yielded such rich 
fruit in the practical sciences of man, is now beginning 
to draw attention to the almost wholly neglected prob- 
lems of the treatment of dependent races by the dom- 
inant nations. About one-third of the human race is 
now controlled by a few powers, and on the whole it 
can be said that the treatment of these subjected peo- 
ples is carried on without adequate knowledge, either 
of their place in the world, or of the best means of de- 
veloping them, according to the laws of growth. Many 
stocks are actually becoming extinct because of wrong 
government and education, and some of the rarest lit- 
eratures and the most interesting peoples have been 
lost to the world. We are too likely to look upon all 
savages as degenerate or arrested stocks, whereas the 
truth is that many are certainly new races in the mak- 
ing. They are the children and youths among nations ; 
destined, it may be, to take the place of the now dom- 
inant races when their powers shall have been ex- 
hausted. The problem of the care of these peoples is 
world-wide. In our own land two different phases 

376 



RACIAL PEDAGOGY 377 

of it are pressing: the education of the negro and of 
the Indian. 

The mistake that has been made is precisely that 
which has been world-wide in the training of children. 
We have tried to educate according to the standards of 
the adult or civilised mind, without the least reference 
to the nature and needs of the object of our attention. 
We have assumed that the purpose of our control of 
uncivilised man is to civilise him, and to impose upon 
him standards derived from our own institutions and 
customs. This is a colossal assumption, and it is 
wrong. The whole spirit of the missionary move- 
ment, which has been cast in the same erroneous 
belief, has been unpedagogic in the extreme. We 
have tried to suppress everything native in the savage, 
and to substitute our adult forms of religion and civic 
life for his. We succeed thereby in adding a super- 
ficial culture to uncivilised man, and it is easy for us 
to believe we have changed his nature. But we are 
mistaken, and such a policy is short-sighted and nar- 
row. We educate for a day, whereas nature takes 
thousands of years to secure lasting results. We edu- 
cate the savage without reference to his stage of de- 
velopment, committing precisely the error we make 
when we enforce precocity upon an individual, and 
with the same result. Degeneration sets in, the race 
does not reach its full development and normal adult- 
hood. Every vigorous savage race is a child, and 
should be treated according to the same principles of 
education as those we apply to the undeveloped indi- 
vidual. This is so plain that it cannot be mistaken by 



378 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

anyone who thinks about it at all. It is time that 
statesmanship and religion both gave heed to the teach- 
ings of science and undertook their work as a problem 
of pedagogy. These problems cannot be solved by 
legislation alone. They are questions of science. And 
science regards all treatment of lower races as prob- 
lems of race hygiene; as questions of mental and 
physical education. 

The first principle of racial pedagogy is this : Each 
race must be educated and governed according to the 
stage of culture and development to which it belongs, 
and not according to what civilised man desires it to 
accomplish in the immediate future. It is absurd to 
treat all alike, to try to Christianise all, and bring them 
to the level of civilised social life; just as much as it 
would be to teach children of all ages in the same 
classroom, and by the same methods. The interest of 
civilised man, above all, must be ignored. Everything 
indigenous should be preserved, if it be not abnormal, 
and never should a higher step be forced, without 
building directly upon a lower one. We are learning 
slowly that religions are not to be judged by an abso- 
lute standard of values ; but relatively, according to 
their fitness for the. stage of mental development of 
the people who hold them. Our religion, the highest 
of all, is oftentimes the most unfit of all to teach to low- 
er races, and can only make them precocious and abnor- 
mal. Instead of destroying native religions, languages 
and customs, we should develop them, rejecting nothing 
that is not unhygienic or grossly immoral. Native in- 
dustries should be encouraged and improved, and 



RACIAL PEDAGOGY 



379 



higher stages or methods of thought and practical life 
be led to but not forced. The aim must always be to 
make the native the best possible representative of 
his own kind ; and to change him into a weak imitation 
of something American or European is to do him a 
poor service. We must not think of the present gen- 
eration as an end in itself, but as the forerunner of 
many thousands of years of the future, to prepare for 
which the present must live out in the best possible 
way its own normal course. The most precious thing 
in the world is health, whether in the individual or in a 
race. Vigorous native stock, developing normally and 
naturally, is a priceless possession of the world ; and if 
these young and growing races are crushed out, or 
injured by forcing and wrong education, the world will 
suffer irreparable harm. 

Two different problems of race culture at home de- 
mand our attention, and the application of these prin- 
ciples : the problem of the negro and of the Indian. 
The greatest mistakes have been made in trying to 
cope with the negro question, in not understanding 
the nature of the negro, who is so different from the 
white man, both in body and mind, that the two races 
should not be treated alike in any particular. The 
negro has a tropical temperament. He is imaginative, 
improvident, keenly sensitive to nature, superstitious, 
excitable, uncontrolled in passion. He is physiolog- 
ically different from the white, suffers from different 
diseases, and the same diseases run different courses 
in the two races. He can no more be made a white 
man in habits and in nature than his colour can be 



380 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

changed. He must therefore be made the best possi- 
ble black man, and not an imitation of a white man. 
For to attempt the latter is to force a stage of life 
upon him for which he is not yet ready, and will only 
cause him to degenerate from diseases and bad habits, 
and become abnormal. He must be trained according 
to his own nature. His life is normally an out-of-door 
life, and industries on the land are his best opportunity. 
His whole training must centre in industry rather than 
in mental development disconnected from motor 
expression. He must be put into the proper environ- 
ment, and then left so far as possible to work out his 
own life, using his own temperament and instincts as 
guides, for there is nothing the white man can sub- 
stitute that will do so well. Given the proper condi- 
tions, the negro will make progress naturally toward 
a higher stage of civilisation, but he cannot be hurried 
by imitating the white man's nature. 

The same applies in principle, with change of details, 
to the treatment of the Indian. We have tried to 
force upon the Indian a culture that is unnatural to 
him. We have destroyed his own wonderful literature, 
religion, and industries, in order to give him our cul- 
ture, and have succeeded in nearly exterminating him 
altogether. We have tried to make him feel disgust 
for his own primitive modes of life, and to scorn all 
his beliefs. All his basketry, pottery, bead work, flint 
chipping, making of moccasins, weaving, bow and ar- 
row making, skin dressing, making of canoes are going 
the way of the lost arts, because of the white man's 



RACIAL PEDAGOGY 381 

totally mistaken notion of race culture, and his pride 
of civilisation. 

The treatment of the Indian's religion has been pe- 
culiarly unpedagogic. The Indian is by nature an an- 
cestor worshipper, and a nature worshipper. He 
prays to the ghosts of his forebears, to the soul of 
plants and animals, and to the sun and moon. To up- 
root all this, and teach him our Sunday School religion 
is futile. He is not in a stage of development to bear 
it. It is all superficial and unnatural. We must not 
cut him off from his past, for the past is a far greater 
civilising force in him than we can ever introduce from 
without. To make him forget his own modes of life, 
forsake his parents and their religion, and learn our 
language from the beginning, and thus to deprive him 
of all the educative values of the myth and story of 
his own language, is as wrong as anything can be in 
education. All the old should be developed rather 
than suppressed. All his native thought, industries, 
and amusements should be taught him rather than 
taken away from him. The educational work must be 
to evolve the higher from the lower gradually and by 
natural steps. Likewise the religious teaching must 
retain the old. If we do not proceed in this way we 
shall soon exterminate the Indian altogether, a calam- 
ity for which there can be little excuse, for the teach- 
ing of science is perfectly clear, at least as to what 
should not be done. 

All uncivilised peoples, according to these principles 
of racial development and culture, are to be regarded 



382 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

as in a stage of childhood or youth, as possible rulers 
of the earth in the distant future, when our own civi- 
lisations shall have grown old. Like children, all can- 
not be brought to full normal maturity, for there are 
the diseased and degenerate among the lower races as 
among individuals. The problem is how to bring each 
to the highest point of development of which it is capa- 
ble, treating it in the interests of its own possible fu- 
ture, and not sacrificing it to the present demands of 
the dominant races. 

References. — 189* 196, 213, 225, 241, 281. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

At the close of 1909 there were 295 titles in the bibliog- 
raphy of President Hall's writings collected in the Gark Uni- 
versity Library. Since then several articles and the large 
and important work Educational Problems have appeared. 
By far the greater part are upon educational topics, or 
upon topics closely related to education. Below are given 
references to those articles and books which seem to the 
writer to be of most immediate importance, from the point 
of view of the student of education. The numbering of the 
complete bibliography has been retained. 

7. The Muscular Perception of Space. Mind, Oct., 1878. 

Vol. 3, pp. 433-450. 
16. The Moral and Religious Training of Children and 

Adolescents. Ped. Sem., June, 1891. Vol. 1, pp. 196- 

210. 
18. Moral Education and Will Training. Ped. Sem., June, 

1892. Vol. 2, pp. 72-89. 
22. The Contents of Children's Minds on Entering School. 

Ped. Sem., June, 1891. Vol. 1, pp. 139-173. 
24. The Study of Children. Privately printed. N. Somer- 

ville, Mass., 1883. P. 13. 
.26. Methods of Teaching History. 2nd edition, 1889. p. 391. 
31. Experimental Psychology. Mind, April, 1885. Vol. 10, 

pp. 245-249. 
33. A Study of Children's Collections. Ped. Sem., June, 

1891. Vol. 1, pp. 234-237. 
37. How to Teach Reading and What to Read in School. 

1886, p. 40. 

383 



384 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

44. The Story of a Sand Pile. Scribner's Magazine, June, 
1888. Vol. 3, pp. 690-696. Reprinted by E. L. Kellogg 
and Co., N. Y., 1897. 

46. Children's Lies. Ped. Sem., June, 1891. Vol. 1, pp. 211- 
218. 

49. The Training of Teachers. The Forum, Sept., 1890. 
Vol. 10, pp. 11-22. 

51. Boy Life in a Massachusetts Country Town Thirty Years 
Ago. Proc. of the Am. Antiq. Soc, 1891. N. S. Vol. 
7, pp. 107-128. 

63. Notes on the Study of Infants. Ped. Sem., June, 1891. 
Vol. 1, pp. 127-138. 

73. Health of School Children as Affected by School Build- 
ings. Proc. N. E. A., 1892, pp. 163-172. 

80. Child Study : the Basis of Exact Education. Forum, 
Dec, 1893. Vol. 16, pp. 429-441. 

82. On the History of American College Text-Books, and 

Teaching in Logic, Ethics, Psychology and Allied Sub- 
jects. Proc. of the Am. Antiq. Soc, N. S. Vol. 9, pp. 

137-174. 

83. American Universities and the Training of Teachers. 

Forum, April, 1894. Vol. 17, pp. 148-159. 

84. Universities and the Training of Professors. Forum, 

May, 1894. Vol. 17, pp. 297-309. 

85. Scholarships, Fellowships, and the Training of Pro- 

fessors. Forum, June, 1894. Vol. 17, pp. 443-454. 

86. Research the Vital Spirit of Teaching. Forum, July, 

1894. Vol. 17, pp. 55S-570. 
88. The New Psychology as a Basis of Education. Forum, 

Aug., 1894. Vol. 17, pp. 710-720. 
92. Child Study. Proc N. E. A., 1894. pp. 173-179. 
103. The Case of the Public Schools ; The Witness of the 

Teacher. Atlantic Monthly, March, 1896. Vol. 77, pp. 

402-413. 
105. The Methods, Status, and Prospects of the Child Study 

of To-day. Trans. Illinois Soc. for Child Study, May, 

1896. Vol. 2, pp. 178-191. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 3S5 

112. A Study of Dolls (with A. Caswell Ellis). Ped. Sem., 

Dec, 1806. Vol. 4, pp. 120-175. 

113. A Study of Fears. Am. Jour, of Psy., Jan., 1897. Vol. 

8, pp. 147-249. 

114. Some Practical Results of Child Study. National Con- 

gress of Mothers. First Annual Session, 1897. PP- 
165-171. 

115. The Psychology of Tickling, Laughing, and the Comic 

(with Arthur Allin). Am. Jour, of Psy., Oct., 1897. 
Vol. 9, pp. 1-41. 

116. Some Aspects of the Early Sense of Self. Am. Jour. 

of Psy., April, 1898. Vol. 9, pp. 351-395- 
128. The Education of the Heart. Kindergarten Mag., May, 

1899. Vol. 11, pp. 592-595; 599-6oo; 604-607. 

131. Philosophy. Decennial Celebration. Clark University, 

1889-1899. Published by the University, 1899. PP- 45- 
59- 

132. A Study of Anger. Am. Jour, of Psy., July, 1899. Vol. 

10, pp. 516-591. 

135. Note on Early Memories. Ped. Sem., Dec, 1899. Vol. 

6, pp. 485-512. 

136. Some Defects of the Kindergarten in America. Forum, 

Jan., 1900. Vol. 28, pp. 579-591. 

141. College Philosophy. Forum, June, 1900. Vol. 29, pp. 

409-422. 

142. Pity (with F. H. Saunders). Am. Jour, of Psy., July, 

1900. Vol. 11, pp. 534-59L 

146. Student Customs. Proc Am. Antiq. Soc, N. S. Vol. 

14, pp. 83-124. 
148. The Religious Content of the Child Mind. (Chap. 7, 

Principles of Religious Education, pp. 161-189.) 
154. Confessions of a Psychologist. Ped. Sem., Mar., 1901. 

Vol. 8, pp. 92-143. 
159. The Ideal School as Based on Child Study. The Forum, 

Sept., 1901. Vol. 32, pp. 24-39. 
164. Form or Substance: The Right Emphasis in English 

Teaching. N. E. Ass'n of Teachers of English. Bos- 



386 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

ton University, Nov. 16, 1901. School Journal, Dec. 7, 
1901. 
168. Some Fundamental Principles of Sunday School and 
Bible Teaching. Ped. Sem., Dec, 1901. Vol. 8, pp. 
439-468. 

170. The High School as the People's College Versus the Fit- 

ting School. Ped. Sem., March, 1902. Vol. 9, pp. 63- 

73- 

171. What is Research in a University Sense and How May it 

Best be Promoted? Ped. Sem., March, 1902. Vol. 9, 
pp. 74-80. 

172. Some Social Aspects of Education. Ped. Sem., March, 

1902. Vol. 9, pp. 81-91. 

173. Adolescents and High School English, Latin, and Alge- 

bra. Ped. Sem., March, 1902. Vol. 9, pp. 92-105. 

176. Some Criticisms of High School Physics and Manual 

Training and Mechanic Arts High Schools, with Sug- 
gested Correlations. Ped. Sem., June, 1902. Vol. 9, 
pp. 193-204. 

177. Normal Schools, Especially in Massachusetts. Ped. Sem., 

June, 1902. Vol. 9, pp. 180-192. 
184. How Children and Youth Think and Feel about Clouds 

(with J. E. W. Wallin). Ped. Sem., Dec, 1902. Vol. 

9, pp. 460-506. 
186. Reactions to Light and Darkness (with Theodate L. 

Smith). Am. Jour, of Psy., Jan., 1903. Vol. 14, pp. 

21-83. 
190. Children's Ideas of Fire, Heat, Frost, and Cold (with 

C. E. Brown). Ped. Sem., March, 1903. Vol. 10, 

PP. 159-199. 
192. Showing Off and Bashfulness as Phases of Self-Con- 
sciousness (with Theodate L. Smith). Ped. Sem., 

Sept., 1903. Vol. 10, pp. 275-314. 
194. Curiosity and Interest (with Theodate L. Smith). Ped. 

Sem., Sept., 1903. Vol. 10, pp. 315-358. 
196. Psychology of Adolescence. IX Anoletoo <apd Co, 2 

vols. 1903. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 387 

197. Co-Education in the High School. Proc. N. E. A., 1903. 
pp. 446-460. 

202. The Jesus of History and of the Passion, vs. the Jesus 
of the Resurrection. Am. Jour, of Rel. Psy. and Ed., 
May, 1904. Vol. 1, pp. 30-64. 

207. In How Far can Child Psychology Take the Place of 
Adult Psychology or Rational Psychology in the Train- 
ing of Teachers? Proc. N. E. A., 1904. pp. 568-571. 

213. The Negro Question. Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc, 1905. 
2nd ser., Vol. 19, pp. 95-107. 

220. Child Study in the University and College. Jour, of 
Education, July 20, 1905. Vol. 12, pp. 136-137. 

222). What Children Do Read and What They Ought to Read. 
Jour, of Ped., Sept., 1905. Vol. 18, pp. 40-51. 

224. The Pedagogy of History. Ped. Sem., Sept., 1905. Vol. 

12, pp. 339-349. 

225. The Negro in Africa and America. Ped. Sem., Sept., 

1905. Vol. 12, pp. 350-368-. 
228. What is Pedagogy? Ped. Sem., Dec, 1905. Vol. 12, 

PP. 375-383. 
244. Three Duties of the American Scholar. Clark College 
Record, Oct., 1906. Vol. 1, pp. 138-152. 

247. Some Dangers of Our Educational System and How to 

Meet Them. New Eng. Mag., Feb., 1907. Vol. 35, 
pp. 667-675. 

248. Play and Dancing for Adolescents. Independent, Feb. 

14, 1907. Vol. 62, pp. 355-358. 

249. The German Teacher Teaches. New Eng. Mag., May, 

1907. Vol. 36, pp. 282-287. 
255. The Culture Value of Modern as Contrasted with that 

of Ancient Languages. New Eng. Mag., Oct., 1907. 

Vol. 37, pp. 167-173. 
257. The Function of Music in the College Curriculum. 

Proc. Music Teachers' National Ass'n, 1908. pp. 13-24- 
260. The Needs and Methods of Educating Young People in 

the Hygiene of Sex. Ped. Sem., March, 1908. Vol. 

15, pp. 82-91. 



388 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

261. The University Idea. Ped. Sem., March, 1908. Vol. 15, 

pp. 92-104. 

262. Psychology of Childhood as Related to Reading and 

the Public Library. Ped. Sem., March, 1908. Vol. 15, 
pp. 105-116. 

263. The Function of Music in the College Curriculum. Ped. 

Sem., March, 1908. Vol. 15, pp. 117-126. 

264. A Glance at the Phyletic Background of Genetic Psy- 

chology. Amer. Jour, of Psy., April, 1908. Vol. 19, 
pp. 149-212. 

267. Relation of the Church to Education. Ped. Sem., June, 

1908. Vol. 15, pp. 186-196. 

268. Pedagogy : Its True Value in Education. Ped. Sem., 

June, 1008. Vol. 15, pp. 197-206. 
270. Sunday Observance. Ped. Sem., June, 1908. Vol. 15, pp. 
217-229. 

277. The Kind of Women Colleges Produce. Appleton's 

Mag., Sept., 1908. Vol. 12, pp. 313-319. 

278. The Elements of Strength and Weakness in Physical 

Education as Taught in College. Ped. Sem., Sept., 
1908. Vol. 15, pp. 347-352. 

279. Recent Advances in Child Study. Ped. Sem, Sept., 

1908. Vol. 15, pp. 347-352. 

280. The Psychology of Music and the Light it Throws Upon 

Musical Education. Ped. Sem., Sept., 1908. Vol. 15, 

PP- 358-364. 

281. How Far Are the Principles of Education Along In- 

digenous Lines Applicable to the American Indian? 
Ped. Sem., Sept., 1908. Vol. 15, pp. 365-369. 

282. The Culture Value of Modern as Contrasted With That 

of Ancient Languages. Ped. Sem., Sept., 1908. Vol. 
15, PP- 370-379. 

288. Fifty Years of Darwinism. In Modem Aspects of Dar- 

winism. 1909. 

289. How Can We Make the Average Public School a Good 

School? The Housekeeper, Feb., 1909. Vol. 32, pp. 
10-13. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 389 

292. What College For My Daughter? Good Housekeeping, 
May, 1909. Vol. 48, pp. 549-55 1. 
Educational Problems, 2 vols., 191 1. 

The list that follows comprises the titles mentioned in the 
References, and not included above. 

8. The Philosophy of the Future. Nation, Nov. 7, 1878. 

Vol. 27, pp. 283-284. 
23. Theology and Education. Nation, July 26, 1883. Vol. 

37, pp. 81-82. 
28. New Departures in Education. No. Am. Review, Feb., 

1885. Vol. 140, pp. 144-152. 
32. Pedagogical Inquiry. Jour, of Proc. and Addresses, 

N. E. A., 1885, pp. 506-511. 
35. Motor Sensations on the Skin. (With H. H. Donald- 
son.) Mind, Oct., 1885. Vol. 10, pp. 557-572. 
40. Dermal Sensitiveness to Gradual Pressure Changes. 

(With Yujiro Motora.) Am. Jour, of Psychology, 

Nov., 1887. Vol. 1, pp. 72-98. 
43. Introduction to H. W. Brown's Trans, of Preyer's The 

Senses and the Will, 1888. 

53. The Educational State or The Methods of Education in 

Europe. The Christian Register, Nov. 6, 1890. Vol. 
69, p. 719. 

54. The Modern University. The Christian Register, Dec. 

4, 1890. Vol. 69, pp. 785-786. 

55. Educational Reforms, Ped. Sem., Jan., 1891. Vol. 1, pp. 

1-12. 

60. Review of William James' Principles of Psychology. 

Am. Jour, of Psy., Feb., 1891. Vol. 3, pp. 578-591. 

61. Contemporary Psychologists. 1. Professor Eduard Zel- 

ler. Am. Jour, of Psy., April, 1891. Vol. 4, pp. 156- 

175. 

64. University Study of Philosophy. Regents' Bulletin (N. 

Y.), No. 8, Jan., 1893, pp. 335-338. 
76. Child Study as a Basis for Psychology and Psycho- 



390 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

logical Teaching. Report of the Comm. of Education 

for the Year 1892-93, pp. 357~37o. 
78. Introduction to F. Tracy's Psychology of Childhood, 

Sept., 1893. 
81. Boys Who Should Not Go to College. Youth's Com- 
panion, March 15, 1894. 

100. Pedagogical Methods in Sunday School Work. Chris- 

tian Register, Nov. 7, 1895. Vol. 74, pp. 719-720. 

101. Results of Child Study Applied to Education. Trans. 

111. Soc. for Child Study, 1895. Vol. 1, No. 4, p. 13. 

102. Modern Methods in the Study of the Soul. Christian 

Register, Feb. 27, 1896, Vol. 75, pp. 131-133. 
104. Psychological Education. Am. Jour, of Insanity, Oct., 
1896. Vol. 53, pp. 228-241. 

106. Generalizations and Directions for Child Study. North 

Western Jour, of Education, July, 1896. Vol. 7, p. 8. 

107. Nature Study. Proceedings, N. E. A., 1896, pp. 156-158. 
109. Some of the Methods and Results of Child Study Work 

at Clark University. Proceedings, N. E. A., 1896, pp. 
860-S64. 
no. Child Study. School Education. July-Aug., 1896, Vol. 

IS, P- 5- 
117. New Phases of Child Study. Child Study Monthly, 
May, 1898. Vol. 4, pp. 35-40. 

120. The Love and Study of Nature, a Part of Education. 

Report of the State Board of Agriculture of Mass., 

1898, pp. I34-IS4. 

121. Heredity, Instinct and the Feelings. Proc. Calif. Teach- 

ers' Ass'n, Santa Rosa, Dec. 27-30, 1898, pp. 46-48. 
123. Food and Nutrition. Proc. Calif. Teachers' Ass'n., 

Santa Rosa, Dec. 27-30, 1898, pp. 59-62. 
127. Resume of Child Study. North Western Monthly, Mar., 

Apr., 1899. Vol. 9, pp. 347-349- 
129. The Kindergarten. School and Home Education, June, 

1899. Vol. 18, pp. 507-509. 

133. The Line of Educational Advance. Outlook, Aug. 5, 
1899. Vol. 26, pp. 768-770. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



391 



137. The Ministry of Pictures. Perry Magazine, Feb., Mar., 

Apr., May, 1900. Vol. 2, pp. 243-245; 291-292; 339- 

340; 387-388. 
140. Some New Principles of Sabbath School Work. Minutes 

of Worcester Baptist S. S. Convention, May 10, 1900. 

C. G. Davis, Worcester, 1900, pp. 10-12. 

143. Child Study and Its Relation to Education. Forum, 

Aug., 1900. Vol. 29, pp. 688-702. 

144. Educational Value of the Social Side of Student Life in 

America. Outlook, Aug. 4, 1900. Vol. 65, pp. 798- 

801. 
147. Introduction to "The Boy Problem" by William Byron 

Forbush, Nov. 1, 1900. 
149. The Greatest Books of the Century. Outlook, Dec. 1, 

1900. Vol. 66, pp. 799-800. 

151. Modern Geography. Journal of Education, Feb. 7, 1901. 

152. Discussion. (Migration among Graduate Students, The 

Type of Examination for the Doctor's Degree, Fel- 
lowships.) The Association of American Universities 
held at Chicago, 111., Feb., 27-28, 1900, and Feb., 26-28, 

1901, pp. 27, 38, 44. 

155. Introduction to "An Ideal School," by P. W. Search, 
June, 1901. 

161. The New Psychology. Harper's Monthly Magazine, 

Oct., 1901, Vol. 103, pp. 727-732. 

162. How Far is the Present High School and Early College 

Training Adapted to the Nature and Needs of Ado- 
lescents? School Review, Dec, 1901. Vol. 9, pp. 649- 
665. 

165. A New Universal Religion at Hand. Metropolitan, Dec, 

1901. Vol. 14, pp. 778-780. 

166. Introduction to " Nature Study and Life," by C. F. 

Hodge, Dec. 3, 1901. 

167. Comparison of American and Foreign Systems of Popu- 

lar Education. Lecture Delivered before the Twentieth 
Century Club, Dec 18, 1901. Boston, 1901, pp. 23-24. 



392 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

180. Christianity and Physical Culture. Ped. Sem., Sept., 

1902. Vol. 9, pp. 374-37& 
185. Remarks on the Certificate Method of Admission to 

Colleges and Universities. Ass'n of Am. Universities, 

N. Y., Dec. 29-31, 1902. 

187. Note on Moon Fancies. Am. Jour, of Psy., Jan., 1903, 

Vol. 14, pp. 88-91. 

188. Child Study at Clark University: An Impending New 

Step. Am. Jour, of Psy., Jan., 1903. Vol. 14, pp. 96- 
106. 

189. The Relations Between Lower and Higher Races. Proc. 

Mass. Hist. Soc, Jan., 1903. 2d Ser., Vol. 17, pp. 4-13. 
191. Note on Cloud Fancies. Ped. Sem., March, 1903. Vol. 
10, pp. 96-100. 

198. Psychic Arrest in Adolescence. Proc. N. E. A., 1903. 

Pp. 811-813. 

199. Introduction to S. B. Haslett's The Pedagogical Bible 

School, Oct., 1903. 

203. Review of Religious Literature. Am. Jour, of Rel. Psy. 

and Ed., May, 1904. Vol. 1, pp. 98-1 11. 

204. The Kindergarten Perverted. Good Housekeeping, 

June, 1904. Vol. 38, p. 627. 

205. Co-education. Proc. N. E. A., 1904. Pp. 538-542. 

206. The Natural Activities of Children as Determining the 

Industries in Early Education. Proc. N. E. A., 1904. 

Pp. 443-447. 
208. Unsolved Problems of Child Study, and the Method of 

Their Attack. Proc. N. E. A., 1904. Pp. 782-787. 
211. Co-Instruction in Graduate Schools. Ass'n Am. Univ., 

Jan. 13, 1905. Proc, 1905. Pp. 42-46. 

215. The Efficiency of the Religious Work of the Y. M. C. A. 

Ped. Sem., Oct., 1905. Vol. 12, pp. 478-489. 

216. Citizens' Initiative as a Factor in Educational Progress. 

Ped. Sem., Dec, 1905. Vol. 12, pp. 471-477. 
218. Adolescence: the Need of a New Field of Medical Prac- 
tice. Mo. Cyclop, of Medical Practice. June, 1905. 
Vol. 8, pp. 241-243. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



393 



226. Recent Observations in Pathological Psychology. Jour. 

of Soc. Sci., Sept., 1905, pp. 139-151. 

227. The Education of Ministers and Sunday School Work 

Among the Unitarians. Ped. Sem., Dec, 1905. Vol. 
12, pp. 490-495. 

231. Place of Formal Instruction in Religious and Moral 

Education in the Home. Proc. of 3d Annual Conv. 
of the Religious Educ. Ass'n, Boston, Feb. 12-16, 1906. 
Pp. 67-72. 

232. What Changes Should be Made in Public High Schools 

to Make Them More Efficient in Moral Training. 
Proc. of the 3d Annual Conv. of the Relig. Educ. 
Ass'n, Boston, Feb. 12, 1906. Pp. 219-223. 
235. The Question of Co-Education. Munsey's Mag., Feb., 
1906, pp. 588-592. 

240. The Feminist in Science. Independent, March 22, 1906. 

Pp. 661-2. 

241. Undeveloped Races in Contact With Civilized. Washing- 

ton Univ. Ass'n Bulletin. Vol. 4, pp. 145-150. 
243. Co-Education. Am. Academy of Medicine Bulletin, 
Oct., 1906. Vol. 7, pp. 653-656. 

245. On Education and Youthful Development. Educ. News, 

Oct. 5, 1906, pp. 739-740. 

246. The Appointment and Obligation of Graduate Fellows. 

Jour, of Proc. and Addresses at the 8th Annual Con- 
ference of the Ass'n of American Universities, 1906. 
Pp. 38. 

250. Should Modern be Substituted for Ancient Languages 
for Culture and Training? Pub. of N. E. Modern 
Language Ass'n, 1907. Vol. 1, pp. 45-57. 

252. Vigorous Attack on Classics. Jour, of Educ. Boston, 
July 4, 1907. 

254. How and When to be Frank with Boys. Ladies' 
Home Journal, Sept., 1907. 

256. The Relation of the Church to Education. Addresses, 
Reports, etc., of the National Council of the Congre- 
gational Churches, 1907. Pp. 33-44- 



394 GENETIC PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 

257. The Function of Music in the College Curriculum. Pa- 
pers and Proc. of the Music Teachers' National Ass'n, 
1908. Pp. 13-24. 

259. Some General Defects in Our School System and How 
to Meet Them. The Conn. Assoc, of College and 
High School Teachers. Report of 1908 meeting. Pp. 
10-16. 

265. Feminisation in School and Home. World's Work, 
May, 1908. Vol. 16, pp. 10237-10244. 

269. The Musical Profession and Children. Ped. Sem., June, 
1908. Vol. 15, pp. 207-246. 

271. From Generation to Generation: With Some Plain Lan- 
guage About Race Suicide and the Instruction of 
Children During Adolescence. Am. Mag., July, 1908. 
Vol. 66, pp. 248-254. 

274. New Work in Education to Raise Our Standards. 

World's Work, July, 1908. Vol. 16, p. 10454. 

275. Recent Advances in Child Study. Jour, of Educ, July 

16, 1908. Vol. 68, p. 114. 

276. The Awkward Age. Appleton's Mag., Aug., 1908. Vol. 

12, pp. 149-156. 

284. Spooks and Telepathy. Appleton's Mag., Dec, 1908. 

Vol. 12, pp. 677-683. 

285. Education of the Heart. So. Calif. Teachers' Ass'n, 

Dec. 21-24, 1908. Redland's Review Press, 1909. Pp. 
31-38. 
287. The Budding Girl. Appleton's Mag., Jan., 1909. Vol. 

13, PP. 47-54. 

293. A Man's Adventure in Domestic Industries. Appleton's 

Mag., June, 1909. Vol. 13, 273-279. 

294. Children's Reading as a Factor in Their Education. The 

School and Home, Sept., 1909. Pp. 17-18. 



THE END 



INDEX 



Adolescence, 31, 81 ; and civilisation, 84; and dancing, 285 ; and 
play, 133; and the future, 85; as centre of education, 93; 
debate in, 244; education in, 211; educational ideals in, 
212 * emotions in, 84; music in, 276; nature study in, 254; 
periods in, 212; philosophy and religion in, 214, 354; sec- 
ond period of, 214; sensory experience in, 83; social edu- 
cation in, 215. 

^Esthetic feelings in industry, 147. 

Ancient traits, 22. 

Anger, 46; education of, 155; uses of, 47. 

Arithmetic, 262, 312; practical, 264. 

Art, appreciation vs. expression, 292; in woman's education, 
372; nature of, 291. 

Arts and crafts movement, 147. 

Athletic ideals, 149. 

Athletics, 148. 

Belief, 61. 

Bible teaching, 186, 187, 350. 

Biological, ideal in woman's education, 360; philosophy, 15; 

principles in physical education, 122, 149. 
Botany, 258. 
Business education, 141. 

Child, and heredity, 53; and savage, 76; as centre of interest, 

.96. 
Childhood, characteristics of, 74; selfishness of, 53. 
Child study, 17, 97; in college, 344. 
Civic education, \) 7, 203 ; ideal in education, 102. 
Classic ideals in education, 101. 
Clouds, interest in, 67. 
Co-education, 363, 367; at adolescence, 364. 
Collecting interests, 130. 

College, 323 — ; and high school, 315; ethics in, 299; fitness for, 
323, 368; logic in, 299; music in, 277; pedagogy in, 344; 
philosophy in, 295 — ; psychology in, 300. 

395 



396 INDEX 

Colonial ideals, 135. 

Combat, instinct of, 129. 

Common sense in woman's education, 374. 

Conversion, and civilisation, 56; as natural development, 55; 

steps in, 54. 
Criminality, 178. 
Curriculum, in college, 327. 

Dancing, 129, 279; as descriptive movement, 282 ; function of, 
282; in adolescence, 285; in school, 283; origin of, 280; 
possibilities of, 280. 

Dances, folk, 284; occupation, 284. 

Debate, 244. 

Democratic ideals, 221. 

Development of finer movements, 127. 

Developmental periods, 29; stages, 72. 

Doll interests, 130. 

Domestic science in woman's education, 373. 

Dormant mind, 25. 

Drama, in high school, 318; in adolescence, 244. 

Drill, 210, 311. 

Drawing, and art, 285, 287; and evolution, 287; evolutionary 
principles in, 288; new methods in, 288; principles of edu- 
cation in, 289. 

Education, as conscious evolution, 94; biological ideal in, 100; 

definition of, 3; general principles of, 91; logical method 

in, 112; in childhood, 207; meaning of, 92; of girls, 362; 

science of, 4, 94; true ideals in, 103. 
Educational, ideals, 101 ; periods, 205; methods of — philosophy, 

14; reform, 337; fruits of — science, 98; system, 98. 
Emotion and art, 292. 

Emotions, education of, 152 — ; in adolescence, 84. 
English, in high school, 241. 
Epics, 243, 318; in history teaching, 268. 
Ethical basis of education, 4. 
Ethics, courses in, 174; in college, 299. 
Evolution, evidences of, 25 — . 
Evolutionary, principles in psychology, 15. 
Examination, college entrance, 317. 

Faith, 61. 

Farm, education for, 142 ; ideals of, 135. 

Fear, heredity in, 44; training of, 154. 

Fears, 43; and science, 46; uses of, 45. 

Feelings, 32 ; as racial, 33 ; methods of studying, 32. 



INDEX 397 

Fitting for life, meaning of, 104. 

Folk-lore, 258. 

Foreign languages, 246 — . 

Froebel, 303. 

Fundamental and accessory in muscle growth, 126. 

Geography, 253. 

Genetic method, 15, 21. 

Genetic-psychology, principles of, 20. 

Geometry, 263. 

Gill-slits, 28. 

Government and school, 221. 

Growth, prolongation of, 30. 

Guilds, 140. 

Gymnastics, 148. 

High school, 314 — ; and college, 315; language subjects in, 239; 

teachers in, 314. 
History, 266; aims of, 266; changes needed, 267; methods, 269; 

— of education for teachers, 342; story telling in, 268. 
Health, and muscle culture, 124; care of, 122; in adolescence, 

124; in kindergarten, 305. 
Heat and cold, child's interest in, 68. 
Honour, 175. 
Human progress, 20. 
Humour, 37. 
Hunger, 34. 
Hygiene, studies of — by teachers, 341. 

Idealism in college, 298. 

Ideals, harmony of practical and cultural, 106; in racial ped- 
agogy, 376 ; in woman's education, 361 ; of college, 324 ; 
of university, 332; of Woman's college, 365; of school for 
girls, 369. 

Imagination, 61 ; training of, 206. 

Imitation, in kindergarten, 308. 

Indian, education of, 380. 

Industrial courses, 138; education, 122, 133; and culture, 140; 
education of women, 142; primitive activities in, 134; in 
intellectual education, 202. 

Infancy, 73 ; and simian age, 74 ; education in, 205 ; moral edu- 
cation in, 168; sex education in, 162. 

Instincts, 32. 

Intellect, 59; and recapitulation, 62; development of, 63; in 
child and race, 67; relation of — to feelings, 59. 

Intellectual education, 193 — . 



398 INDEX 

Interest, as test of educational method, 117; in adolescence, 
320, 325; in intellectual training, 192, 193; in sensory ex- 
pression, 65. 

Jesus and conversion, 57. 

Kindergarten, 303; faults of, 305; hygiene in, 305; nature 

study in, 306; requirements of k- teachers, 306. 
Knowledge, excess of, 120. 

Language, in kindergarten, 309; process of learning — , 65; 

— teaching, 229; values of abstract — , 241. 
Languages, 312 — . 
Latin, 246. 
Laughter, 37. 
Literature, for children, 235; in high school, 318; in the school, 

233; teaching of, 230. 
Logic, in college, 299. 

Manners, 370. 

Manual training, 143; and physics, 257; in the high school, 
146; limitations of, 144; outline of course of, 145. 

Mathematics, 260 — ; games in teaching, 264; methods of teach- 
ing, 262. 

Memory, 311. 

Methods, in university, 335. 

.Mind, nature of, 23. 

Model school, 343. 

Modern languages, 249 — ; in high school, 319; teaching of, 249. 

Moon, child's thoughts about, 70. 

Motor interests, 200. 

Motor training, types of, 127. 

Moral education, 167, 173; adult standards in, 170; — and 
epics, 268; and history, 267; and literature, 238; ethnic 
literature # in, 171; in infancy, 168; religion in, 172, 173. 

Moral ideal, in education, 104. 

Moral life, complexity of, 171. 

Morals and myths, 243. 

Music, 272; in adolescence, 276; in college, 2jy, origin of, 274; 
power of, 272; primitive, 275; technique in, 274; values of, 
272. 

Myth, 61, 234; — making, 206; and morals, 243. 

Nature interests, in intellectual training, 196. 
Nature love, in religion, 350. 
Nature of mind, problems of, 21. 



INDEX 3 99 

Nature study, 251; in kindergarten, 306; order in, 255. 

Nascent stages, 109, 195. 

Natural objects, child's attitude toward, 66. 

Natural sciences, 251 — . 

Negro, education of, 379. 

Nervous disorders in puberty, 82. 

Normal school, 338—. 

Nourishment of mind, 193. 

Novel reading, 244. 

Number, 260. 

Organization of schools, 219. 
Over-individuation, 91. 

Pain, as educator, 153. 

Pedagogy, for girls, 373; in college, 344; in woman's college, 
346; racial — , 376; science of, 94. 

Personality, in college life, 325 ; — sense, 64. 

Philosophy and education, 5 ; and youth, 9 ; evils of in col- 
lege, 295; in college, 295 — , 330 — ; in woman's education, 
372. 

Philosophical truth, test of, 7 — . 

Phonic method, 232. 

Physics, 256; and manual training, 257. 

Pictures, uses of, 292. 

Pity, 47; education of, 159; in children, 48. 

Play, 29, 41, 128, 132, 213; and dancing, 281 ; and work, 112; as 
athletic ideal, 150; as practical education, no; in kinder- 
garten, 307. 

Pleasure, as educator, 153. 

Pragmatic ideals of knowledge, 93. 

Psychology, assumptions of, 18; for teachers, 339; future of, 
17; in college, 300. 

Psychosis and neurosis, 14. 

Pubertal periods, 81. 

Puberty, muscular strength in, 81 ; nervous disorders in, 82. 

Racial pedagogy, 376 — ; ideals of, 376. 

Reading, 230; for child, 237; methods of teaching, 231; sci- 
ence — in high school, 243. 

Recapitulation, and drawing, 287, 290; and education, 108; and 
science studies, 255 ; as educational principle, 105 ; in edu- 
cation of feelings, 152; in religious education, 186; law 
of, 27 ; stages in — , 28. 



400 



INDEX 



Religion, and development, 181 — , 207; and nature, 183; dog- 
matic, 52; in college, 328; in education of Indians, 381; 
in woman's education, 370; stages of — in child, 50; in 
secular school, 185 ; story telling in, 184. 

Religious feelings, 49, 50; and dancing, 281; and nature, 51. 

Religious institutions, 349 — . 

Religious psychology, problems of, 58. 

Religious stories, 187. 

Religious training in adolescence, 189. 

Research, 383. 

Rhymes, in early reading, 232. 

Routine learning, 209. 

Rudimentary functions, 116. 

Sand-pile, 131. 

School, boards, 222; defects of — system, 222; — grades, 221, 
310; hygiene, 123; improvement in, 227; limitations of — , 
115; organization, 341; system, 219. 

Sciences, 334; in woman's education, 371; in high school, 319. 

Self-consciousness, 157. 

Self-government, 178. 

Sensory experience, in adolescence, 83. 

Series, 261. 

Sexual, education in adolescence, 165; — emotions, education 
of, 161; — instinct, 35; life, 82; life and exercise, 133; life 
and recapitulation, 36. 

Social, education in adolescence, 215; emotions, 156; ideals in 
industrial education, 136; life in adolescence, 321; in col- 
lege, 329; methods in intellectual training, 201; methods 
in nature study, 203 ; morality, 175. 

Stories, 234; telling of, 184, 267, 343. 

Sunday, 190, 356. 

Sunday School, 350. 

Sun myths, 69. 

System, faults of school, 220. 

Tadpole's tail, 107. 

Teachers, in high school, 314; in Sunday school, 353; distri- 
bution of — in grades, 220. 

Teaching, in Germany, 226; low standards of, 224; universality 
of, 92 ; special — in college, 326. 

Teasing, explanation of, 42. 

Theme writing, 239. 

Theological School, 355. 

Tickle feeling, 38. 



INDEX 4 oi 

Touch, 64. 

Trades, humanistic elements in, 140. 

Training of teachers, 337. 

Transcendentalism, in college philosophy, 297. 

Transition periods, 76. 

Truth, for the child, 72. 

Truthfulness, 168. 

Ultimate truths, 10. 

University, 332 — ; training of educators in, 338. 

Vernacular, 229. 

Vocabulary, widening of, 242; in youth, 313. 

Vulgar, laughter at in children, 40. 

Wind, children's thought about, 68. 
Wit, 39; uses of, 159. 

Women, industrial education of, 142; pedagogy in — 's col- 
lege, 346; in professional school, 369. 
Writing, 311; too early, 230. 

Young Men's Christian Association, 356. 
Youth, 78; education in, 208, 210. 



3477 



